Dominating Blow of Inspiring League Starter 2.0 - The Rank #1 Guardian Build from Allflame League

A couple notes on the notes - I formatted it in such a way that each section is (mostly) quarantined for eachother. This is mostly so people don't get overwhelmed by a huge wall of text and can take it step by step. If you're looking for more notes, scroll down and I probably address it in the next section. ALSO IF YOUR CLEAR SUCKS SWAP OUT RUTHLESS WITH ANCESTRAL CALL. If I don't address your particular concern, or you have a question, you can catch me when I'm live! (twitch.tv/ArminYou_ or youtube.com/Armin_You) or in my community discord (link: https://discord.gg/r8Q2FGe5hE). I stay active in all 3. If you leave your concern there I will see it and respond to it as best I can. Item Filter - I have an item filter you *can* use for the build. It's still being updated and worked on, and may hide stuff you want to see. I will personally be using it. Use v1 for campaign/4 stone gearing, then when you're ready to swap into your main strategy the Strict filter will hide most things that are lesser than 1 chaos in value. You can follow them here: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/arminyou-4843/item-filters TABLE OF CONTENTS - Leveling Section (A1-A10) Early Mapping (2-4 Stone) Midgame (atlas complete, into your farming strat) Endgame (Juicing) - Leveling Section - - Act 1 - You'll need to mule for a Momentum and Frost Blades using Ranger. Check vendors for links/belts before dumping in stash. Aim for having a Rustic Sash and an Iron RIng. Also be on the lookout for a 2h weapon, any 2h weapon will be fine. For level 1-12 we use Frost Blades linked to Ancestral Call for clear. When we need Single Target we use Spectral Throw linked to Momentum and Added Fire Damage. Tarkleigh will give you a quest reward for a gem after Brutu. Make sure to grab a Blue gem. Sell the gem and your Iron Ring to a vendor and this will give you a Sapphire Ring for Merveil. This will give you cold resistance which will make you significantly tankier against Merveil. At level 4 we get Decoy Totem and Summon Holy Relic. Summon Holy Relic can go in your weapon swap to level. Before Merveil you *should* have 3 Orbs of Transmutation. You need one for Precision, one for Sunder, and one for Intimidating Cry. If you need to come back in a2 for Precision that's totally fine, just make sure you have Sunder and Intimidating Cry for Merveil. This is also a good time to buy a Ruthless support, and potentially a Faster Attacks if you can afford it for your Leap Slam setup. From here you Sunder things you want to kill until they die. If you're in single target make sure to use Intimidating Cry on cooldown for 2 double damage hits. Do this to Merveil until she's dead. This setup procs a big bleed, and if you crit can proc a big ignite Even though you're swapped to Sunder, make sure to keep your Summon Holy Relic in your offhand. - Act 2 - Pick up Herald of Ash after The Chamber of Sins. Bum Rush Spiritual Aid on the tree and upgrade your weapon base. After Weaver, talk to Silk to get a new support gem. if you have a big phys weapon you *can* swap Added Fire Damage to Melee Physical Damage support to make your bleeds biggerbut you have enough crit that ignites are actually something to consider damage wise. Still, keep it in your offhand as it's our 4th link once we get one. For our Bandit we Help Alira. This effectively solves our pre-kitava resistance. - Act 3 - After the Crematorium grab Vulnerability from Clarissa. Around this point you can start gambling for 4 links from Marmoa. Be sure to check vendors for links and a Prismatic Tincture or Rosethorn Tincture. After talking with Dialla in the Solaris Temple you will get a Jade Amulet from her. If you haven't gotten one yet, grab this one and equip it. It's important for our Dexterity Requirements. If you've leveled a slams character before you've probably felt the lack of Blood Rage. You can go into the Library and complete Siosa's quest to get it if you really feel the speed loss, otherwise grab it in a6 from Lily Roth. You can also consider grabbing Convocation from him post Lab. Now, coming out of Lab we grab Radiant Crusade, giving us Sentinel of Radiance (I'll be calling him Robert from here on, or Hot Bob for short.) He clears enough that you should be able to skip white packs and hatecrime the Blue packs and Yellow monsters. - Act 4 - Grab Fist of War after Malachai, start thinking about getting overcapped resistances (105%) before act 5. Here you should also grab an Ice Golem from Oyun (the lady standing next to Dialla at the exit), as this will help with some potential accuracy issues down the line. - Act 5 - Midway through you get a deterministic Viridian Jewel. This can be rolled for mana leech, which will be important later as our tree doesn't natively get a source of it. - Act 6 - Once you complete Lily Roth's quest to clear the strand, grab a Dominating Blow, Raise Spectre, and level them in your offhand. By this point you should also have the Sovereignty notable on tree. If you're struggling on Resistances socket in a Purity of Elements. This gives you 20% to all elemental resistances (huge) and immunity to elemental ailments. This means you fear no strongbox. You can also swap out Vulnerability for Assasin's Mark linked to Mark on Hit. Be on the lookout for Staff bases as this is a very good time to swap your weapon. - Act 7 - In The Broken Bridge, return the Silver Locket to Weylam and he will give you a quest reward for a Diamond Flask. This is a deterministic way to get one in campaign. - Act 8 - From Lab grab the Unwavering Crusade node. This gives you Elemental Relics which give you the 3 major damage auras, giving you a huge amount of flat to play around with. All of it gets increased due to our generic scaling. - Act 10 - Run Merciless Lab until you get Dominating Blow of Inspiring and swap. If you're in trade you can skip this and go straight to mapping, buying it when you can. Ideally get some quality on it too if you can stomach the farming. Bastion of Hope gives you a decent chunk of block, helping you feel defensively much thicker. For the swap you also want to make sure you're running Flesh and Stone and Purity of Elements MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TRIBAL FURY OR IT WILL FEEL LIKE SHIT. I would also make sure you're on Staff as a weapon base if possible. Follow the gem links in the Skills tab. If you have a particularly big Axe or Mace, both of those are fine to run, but you'll eventually need to swap to Staves for the crit and block they offer. Ideally get quality on your Assassin's Mark and your Dominating Blow of Inspiring. Both of those have high quality value. You can wait until you have access to Uber Lab to make it a bit easier. Prioritize Dominating Blow as we have Socket Colors and staff notables that can make up for a bit of a lack in quality on our Assassin's Mark. Now that you're swapped there are two spectres you want to grab. To make sure you're summoning the right ones, while you have the Raise Spectre gem on your hotbar hold A on your keyboard and hover over the corpse to see it's name. As for the spectres you want to grab, the Stygian Silverback will give you Frenzy charges, and he can be found in Act 7's The Ashen Fields zone. The Warcaller will give you Onslaught, he can be found in The Karui Fortress in the special area you get your free tattoo from. If you're confused refer to the video guide. Importantly, you need the minion cooldown recovery mastery to get perma charge uptime on single target. If you're finished with campaign and wish to read the mapping notes SCROLL DOWN THERE'S MORE. There's more down here :3 - Early Mapping - IMPORTANT QOL READ ME - You want to be on the lookout for Viridian Jewels. To make the build comfier, you need a Viridian Jewel with a Mana Leech modifier. Alt spam it if you have to. It takes around 40 alts. If you can get other mods - great! But really hard prioritize the mana leech. Until then you can use an Enduring Mana Flask. Importantly on the tree you want to prioritize Mana Cost Efficiency until this point. The Dominating Blow Swap tree accounts for plenty of Cost Effeciency. Particularly keep the Righteous Decree notable and Inspiration on until you get a mana leech jewel. First priority is a 5 link chest. Once you have the right sockets and have capped elemental resistances, every piece of gold should be dumped into Faustus gambling until you a 5 link chest. In trade you can usually just go buy one for anywhere between 1-5c. Make sure it's an Armour base and ideally a Golden Plate or better in terms of basetype. Emphasis on the better, Golden Plate is a floor and notably not a lot of armour.The higher the base the better the armour. You can check basetypes here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Body_armour Once you have a 5l, if it has good enough stats on it (min 2 resistances and crafted + armour or life prefixes) great! Use it. If not, you can alt roll it until it has a prefix/suffix combo with high enough Armour - SPECTRE SETUP - Since we're poor, we run Carnage Chieftain for frenzy charge generation. We get this from act 7 Ashen Fields. Warcaller is gotten from act 6 Karui Fortress. He gives us Onslaught. He's found near where you first drop your campaign tattoo. IF YOU HAVE MONEY/ARE LUCKY - The Blasphemer, either normal or perfect. He gives a RIDICULOUS Smite aura. 17 to 700 flat added damage is a ton. Replace the Warcaller, as we can get Onslaught elsewhere. TWO STONE WEAPON CRAFTING GUIDE - If you're struggling to get a weapon, this will get you at a baseline the weapon included in the 2 stone POB, which is more than enough to kill Eater/Exarch. Step 1 - Get a Judgement Staff. Ezomyte and Maelstrom bases also work, but they're slower and attack speed is important. Step 2 - Use Orbs of Alteration to roll the item until you get any tier of flat physical damage. Step 3 - If it's tier 3+ (you can check by pressing alt and hovering it) and has an open suffix, use an Augmentation Orb to go for either Attack Speed or Critical Strike chance. If it's below t3, simply sell the item to a vendor with a Granite Flask and Augmentation Orb. This will upgrade the tier of phys, then repeat the above if it's t3+. Notably, this can also be done with elemental damage and their respective flasks. So if you have a Lightning Damage weapon that has a low tier, you can upgrade it with a Topaz Flask. This with crafted % phys will actually get you a higher DPS weapon, but won't benefit Marshal of Divinity or your Elemental Relic's Hatred aura as much, so it's roughly the same anyhow. Step 4 - Once you have t3+ with Attack Speed or Critical Strike Chance OR t2, use a Regal Orb to upgrade it to Rare. Then craft % Increased Physical Damage on it at the crafting bench. If it rolled a % increased phys at a high %, AMAZING, Craft Attack Speed, Crit, or an Elemental Damage prefix. If you rolled a low % phys from the regal, cry and go back to step 1. You can also use the Unyielding Mortality unique staff if it's cheap and you're unfamiliar with crafting. If you're slightly more wealthy, use Screaming or higher Hatred, Wrath, or Anger essences to craft on a Judgement base, others bases are possible but worse. Ideally you want Attack Speed and 2 t3+ elemental damage prefixes. This should be around 800dps, which is more than good enough. For your other gear, just identify it off the ground. If you're invested in Breach you can get great gear from the tree. If you like Expedition, you can also get great gear off Rog. Betrayal can also get you decent 3-4 mod items depending on how much you run. Just pick one mechanic and run it, you will either get currency to craft gear, or the gear itself. Biggest goal in gearing is hitting Resistance cap. Rush Eater/Exarch. Recipe can get you a guaranteed 500 dps staff, you can also get a 1h mace instead but you're working with a lower block weapon then. Also base crit is worse on Mace. Other Weapons are possible but don't have as effecient of points, have worse charge gen, and have higher attribute requirements. While eventually we swap to shields, it's a bit prohibitive to gear like that early due to point cost and bad crit. After clearing Eater/Exarch, I would recommend clearing your atlas and farming until you have enough currency and points to get into an atlas strategy You want as high of DPS on your staff as you reasonably can get. 500 dps is a floor, but I'd shoot for 700-800 dps. EVEN FLAT CHAOS DAMAGE IS GOOD DAMAGE, ALL OUR SCALING IS GENERIC. Every bit of gold will go towards Faustus gambling until you have a 5 link. Gamble an Armour base. Once you have that make sure to establish disenchanters in Kingsmarch. We will use them later for Recombinating, it's best to take any uniques and dump them in there now so we have dust when we need it. Shoot for around 10-15k Armour and 4-4.5k life or so. Make sure you get Accuracy somewhere (Often Rings, Gloves, and Helmets are good. At least 200 or so.) You have Purity of Elements, so that's effectively +3 suffixes you can find it on. Alternatively if you have a big weapon with an open prefix you can craft Hits Can't Be Evaded and spec all the accuracy nodes you would've taken on tree into more damage. Also, prioritize higher life on gear once you have resistances capped. Shoot for around 100 per piece (besides chest, which we use the life mastery for). Run EVERY Delirium you see. You want to fish for a Minion Damage Cluster. Even a bad cluster is still 10% damage per node, which is effectively 30% for us. This also means we want to pick up every Bone Ring we see, fishing for Minion Attack Speed and Minion Damage. Eventually you will just buy a base to craft on. Once you hit red maps, there will be Elegant Foils on the filter. Make sure to pick these up as you go. We'll be using them to recombinate our Endgame weapon later. For Midgame notes simply scroll down. - Midgame - GEM SWAPS - We swap Purity of Elements for Mana-Infused Staff for block. To get ailment immunity we use Brine King Pantheon and Soul of Abberath. If you get shocked you might just die about it sometimes? Otherwise our Immortal Call setup should be enough one shot protection to live most things. We use Cast when Stunned to Immortal Call to keep us from getting one shot. We also link our Ice Golem into this setup to guarantee uptime. Get Farrul ascendancy as fast as humanly possible. The amount of Speed, Crit, and Damage you get is hard to overstate. You can use this tree to farm it out in SSF or early trade, otherwise in trade I would simply buy the invite. https://poeplanner.com/a/6RhF SPECTRE SETUP - We want to annoint Death Attunement for a 3rd Spectre. This will cost a Silver oil, Crimson Oil, and Clear Oil. If you for some reason don't have this, you just drop whatever onslaught spectre you're running in favor of Blasphemer and Carnage Chieftain. By this stage of the game we should have an amulet we won't be unequipping for a while. Either a Yoke of Suffering, an Eternal Struggle with dominant minion damage implicit, or a Bonemeld (make sure if using Bonemeld your resistances are overcapped in hideout - 135% before minions. This will keep you from walking into a map and getting one tapped). A well crafted rare is also fine, a well crafted Turquoise Amulet crafted with Scorn essences for crit multi will be worse than the above uniques typically, but will be good enough to use for a while. This is the setup I would recommend, get what you can based on prices and whatnot. Blasphemer is probably the biggest part, as he's a huge part of our damage plan. Carnage Chieftain for Frenzy gen. Act 7 Ashen Fields is where you get him. Warcaller/Forest Warrior for Onslaught. Forest Warrior is better if you can find it relatively cheap, as he also gives Culling Strike. Warcaller can be found in Act 6 Karui Fortress. Blasphemer gives us a HUGE smite damage aura. He's found from Ritual (or the real real is be in trade and buy him off the market). He can be either Normal or Perfect. If you're BIG balling and have some way to get 4 Spectres (Both Death Attunement annoint or level 25 through helmet shenanigans, amulet etc.), you can fill it out with these. Forest Warrior gives Onslaught and Culling Strike. Every tier from Imperfect to Perfect also gives these benefits. Anything below Perfect is a bug and might get patched. Perfect Spirit of Fortune gives lucky lightning damage. A fine option, but not super necessary. Perfect Warlord gives a small vitality aura and Endurance Charge generation. Good if you've 1h swapped earlier than endgame. Perfect Judgemental Spirit gives a Discipline aura, which is good for extra pool. Perfect Guardian Turtle gives a Determination aura alongside a bit of phys reduction. Solid, but it can be slow and expensive. My setup usually goes Stygian Silverback, Forest Warrior, Blasphemer, then Guardian Turtle or Perfect Judgemental Spirit when I can afford it. Though this is flexible. To get a 4th Spectre, you need a level 25 Raise Spectre gem. Level 25 is typically achieved through - Bonemeld amulet or +2 Minion amulet +2 Minion Helmet Level 21 gem ANIMATE GUARDIAN GEAR - By this point you should have reasonable access to these or their equivalents. WEAPON - Relentless Fury gives us a source of Culling Strike if we don't have a Forest Warrior. Otherwise, Sign of the Sin Eater can give you a shitty form of Elemental AIlment immunity. If you're really wealthy, Kingmaker is baller as fuck. Gives us 50% Crit Multi, 10 fortification, and culling strike. Typically very expensive though. Also an option is a Hunter weapon that has % chance to intimidate on hit. SHIELD (if applicable) - Transfer-Attuned Spirit Shield will sap on block, giving you a bit of extra survivability here or there. There are also variants of this shield that Scorch or Brittle enemies, so that's definitely something to consider. The Surrender gives recover on block to your AG, which helps keep it alive. Could also be a Shaper Influenced shield instead. Otherwise a generic rare shield works just fine. HELMET - Rare Shaper Helm with "Nearby Enemies take #% increased Elemental Damage" is a huge damage increase. Assuming you're in trade, Crown of the Tyrant is also a big damage increase, giving -10% to nearby enemy elemental resistance and a bit of flat. Finally, if you're big baller, a helmet with a corrupted "Nearby enemies have Malediction" implicit is insane value. CHEST - Ambu's Charge and it's replica variant is solid if you have it, otherwise a Gruthkul's Pelt or generic rare chest piece with resistances and regen will go a long way to keeping your AG alive. AG regen is pretty important despite us having him recover on minion death. BOOTS - Legacy of Fury is good for giving nearby enemies scorched. A worse but SSF achievable variant is a rare pair of boots with "Drop Scorched Ground when you move" Eldritch Implicit (from Exarch embers). If you're rich, Windscream with a pair of gloves that have a curse will allow you a pretty big single target increase should you want that. GLOVES - Southbound is a pretty standard option. You can also use a rare pair of gloves with Intimidate on them, either from the Exarch implicit or Hunter? influenced gear. If using windscream, you want a pair with a corrupted Curse implicit such as Elemental Weakness. MIDGAME WEAPON CRAFTING - For this you have two options. 1. Essence Spamming (with a fracture or without) Step 1 - Get a base, ideally Judgement Staff as it's the best attack speed, but others are fine:tm:. If it's trade and you can buy fractured, either go for Attack Speed, Crit, or a Damage Prefix. t3+ should be your target for the mods. Step 2 - Once you have a base, get some Essences. Any essence that doesn't conflict with your fractured mod (if you have it). So if you got an Attack Speed fracture, use Shrieking Hatred, Anger, or Wrath essences. Step 3 - Essence roll until you have 3-4 desirable mods. Ideally 2 t3+ Damage Prefixes, Attack Speed, and if you're lucky some crit. Something like t3 lightning damage, t3 cold damage, t3 attack speed as a base. Crit is nice but not technically necessary. Step 4 - Finally, once you have your 4 mod item, bench craft on what you're missing. If you have an open prefix, it's almost always a damage mod. If it's an open suffix, either attack speed or crit, whatever you're missing. ARMOUR CRAFTING - You have two efficient options for this tier of gearing: Essence Spamming on Fractrured Gear is your best bet. If you're SSF or poor get bases from the Breach Tree. Then you very simply take an essence that guarantees a modifier you want and spam them on items until you get 3-4 good mods and bench craft your last one. EXAMPLES - You need gloves. You buy or drop a fractured 34% Cold Resistance pair of Paladin Gloves. You then use Essences of Greed until you get 1-2 additional good modifiers. Say you roll t3 Lightning Resistance and t4 Armour/Energy Shield. Bench Craft another resistance or Minion Damage on the prefix and bang, you've got a good item. We'll do another. Say you need a body armour. You buy a 6 link base off the market (maybe Paladin's Hauberk? Whatever Armour/ES base you can afford.) You then spam an Essence of Envy on it until you get t3 Cold Resistance, t3 Armour/Evasion, and craft either more Armour/ES on the prefix or Resistance on the suffix should you need it. Darkness Enthroned you can get from farming Abyss or buying it off trade. It's a great belt option if you want a bit more dmg without a Mageblood.Shouldn't be much more than a Div or so. For the Jewels you want to either buy a fracture of a mod you want that's cheap (either Bleed, Poison, Minion Skills, Life can be cheapif it's low tier/low level). Then you can harvest spam them with life or Defenses depending fracture you buy until you get 3 alright mods. Typically you go Ghastly Jewels, pushing for % Minion Damage when you use a minion skill, % minion attack speed, and Life/ES. Murderous Eye Jewels with flat damage can also be a good option. JEWELERY CRAFTING - Either get fractures/bases from the Breach tree and use attribute essences if you need them OR Run some Harvest and use a resistance reforge to get a 2 decent enough resistances on a good and 70+ life. Then craft - mana cost and you're done. At the end of the day most jewellery crafting is Harvest or Breach based. Minion Damage Cluster - Now is the point where you want to keep this on your radar. Not necessary right now, but eventually you want an 11+ (ideally 12 but 11 is cheaper) Minion Damage Cluster with Increased Effect and no notables. Ideally there are some other modifiers you care about, but they're variable depending on what you want to craft/can afford so here's some options. If you're poor, getting an ilvl 83 cluster is fine. This will cap out at 25% increased effect, but this is ok. Using Orbs of Alteration and Augmentation spam until you get % increased Effect and either Minion Attack Speed or % to All Elemental Resistances. Then Regal and hope for Energy Shield on the prefix. If not, reroll. You really want that ES. Otherwise you can use the Harvest bench to reforge Defense or Speed to try and get the 3 modifiers. If you have money - To get a cluster like this you can either alt spam or fracture it. To alt spam you roll an ilvl 84+ until you get 35% increased effect then Augment and Regal orb until you get 2/3 desirable mods (energy shield is NECESSARY). For fracturing roll until the jewel has 4 mods and 2 that you would be ok with having (typically minion attack cast speed and 35% increased effect). You can roll this by using the Reforge Speed craft at the Harvest bench. Then you slam and prayge. Energy Shield/Life - More hitpool more good. It's as shrimple as that. Minion Attack/Cast Speed - Since we have Spiritual Command, this means more speed for us. Resistances - Helps counteract our Bonemeld eventually, very nice to have. Ultimately though none of this matters if you don't have increased effect. Get increased effect on it, and fill the stats from there based on what you can afford. Another important unique is a Watcher's Eye jewel. While normally this would give a modest benefit for a different build, due to the nature of this one we have the potential to be affected by 7 or more applicable auras for the purposes of Watcher's Eye. This means we can very easily get a two or even three mod jewel, and when combined these effects can be very powerful. Some notable mods: SUPER WANT - Wrath Energy Shield Leech - This gives us a ton of extra recovery. Very nice if you're running something like Delve, where degens can heavily hurt ES based builds. - Hatred Increased Critical Strike Chance - The fattest damage this side of the missisipi. 1%+ extra base crit is insane, and basically caps our crit. If you want more damage, this is the mod you should take. Though fair warning, they're typically expensive even for a single mod version of this jewel. But getting one with multiple *shouldn't* be too insane. If you have extra budget and are looking for a marginal upgrade, look at the ones below for a second modifier- Nice to Have (try to fill whichever one you pick with one of these mods, ultimately lower leverage) - Wrath Critical Strike Chance - This can be very nice to have alongside a defensive mod. Worse than Hatred crit, but still does a lot for getting us capped. Very worthwhile investment for the extra cost. - Anger Critical Strike Multiplier - If your crit is already solved, this is a great option for more damage. Up to 50% is better than you can get on basically any jewel for this build. And getting it alongside a defensive mod? Gigantic. - Discipline Energy Shield Regeneration - Discipline Recover on Kill - Precision Attack Damage Alternate Amulet Options - IMPORTANT - IF YOU SWAP YOUR AMULET YOU WILL NEED TO USE DEATH ATTUNEMENT OR AN EMPOWER/CONGREGATION WITH YOUR RAISE SPECTRE TO HAVE 3. THIS IS IMPORTANT, THESE ARE A LOT OF DAMAGE AND UTILITY. Should you want more damage, there are other amulets you can run. Ashes of the Stars - Relatively cheap unique in trade at this point, but it is an uber drop. It gives us more quality on our Dominating Blow of Inspiring. It is a huge amount of damage, and is less conditional than Yoke of Suffering. Eternal Struggle - With a dominant Minion Damage eldritch implicit, it gets you huge attributes and 15% Culling Strike, which is effectively 15% more damage. Can also get you some other minor benefits like extra damage or accuracy. - ENDGAME - BIG NOTE - YOU NEED BRINE KING TO AVOID GETTING STUNNED. WITHOUT IT YOU GET CHAIN STUNNED AND IT'S NOT FUN. :( WEAPON CRAFTING - STAFF CRAFTING - Step 1 - Have 10-20 Judgement Staf Bases. Roll them using Alteration orbs until you have several that have t2+ flat physical damage, t2+ % physical damage, and t2+ attack speed. You can use the Granite flask recipe from earlier to help with this. Step 2 - Smash the t2+ flat and t2+ % phys together with the random recombinator. Do this until both mods survive on the same item Step 3 - Take the two phys mod item and smash it together in the random recombinator with your attack speed bases. By the end of this step only these 3 mods should be on the item. Step 4 - Multimod and craft Hits Can't Be Evaded and Critical Strike Chance and you're done! ELEGANT FOIL CRAFTING (1h/Shield Variant) - We use recombination to get our endgame weapon. Step 1 - Make sure you have 10-20 bases at least of the Elegant Foil base. Roll them using Alteration Orbs until you get t2+ of Elemental Damage or Attack Speed. Lightning/Fire damage is the best combo, but use what you get. Step 2 - Once you have 2 t2+ elemental damage bases, put them in the random recombinator until they're both on the same weapon. Step 3 - Take that weapon and recombinate it with Attack Speed until you get a 3 mod weapon with t2+ of 2 elemental damage modifiers and attack speed. Step 4 - With that 3 mod weapon, multi-mod and craft Hits Can't Be Evaded and Critical Strike Chance. And you're done! Should you be using the Endgame Alt variant with Void Fangs, you'll want to craft it through Fracturing. Step 1 - Use Essence of Zeal to roll the Void Fangs claw until you have 4 modifiers total, with 2 modifiers you wish to target for a fracture. This is ideally t2+ Lightning or Chaos Damage alongside Essence Attack Speed. If it's more than 4 mods, annul down to 4 to maximize your chance of hitting. Step 2 - Once it's 4 mods grab your fracturing orb and SLAM THAT BITCH. You either win and get your flat damage or Attack Speed, or cry and go back to step 1. Step 3 - Once you have your fracture, you roll the weapon with either Essence of Wrath, Essence of Envy, or Essence of Zeal based on what you fractured. Roll until you have the Attack Speed, Lightning Damage, and Chaos damage with an open prefix and open suffix. Step 4 - Craft cannot roll attack mods and annul until you have your prefixes and attack speed. If you have an extra suffix sticking around like Crit Multi, just get more crit elsewhere on the build and craft Hits Can't Be Evaded. Step 5 - Assuming you annul'd down to 3 mods, multi mod and craft Hits Can't Be Evaded and Crit Chance And you're done! If you're crafting a Spiritblade it's the same process, just minus the chaos damage bit. For your Helmet you have a couple options. Expedition and Rog crafting can get you a +2 minion base that you can use non-native natural modifiers through essences to transfer. OR You can use Rancour to reforge minion and fracture a helmet. I will have a more in depth crafting tutorial for this before league start, this is simply a placeholder until I get the process more than roughed out For Endgame, if you're swapping to Chaos Innoculation (CI), I would recommend waiting to swap until level 95+ and you have the chest crafted at the bare minimum. While you can do this swap earlier, it probably won't feel very good unless you meet these targets: 8k ES with Bonemeld Effects up SUPER IMPORTANT - WHEN YOU HAVE BONEMELD YOU WANT TO HAVE 40% RESISTANCES OVER WHAT YOU THINK YOU NEED. Say the cap is 75% and you normally want 95% for exposure cap and whatnot, you actually need an extra 40% (135%) due to Bonemeld's downside. 12 Passive Minion Cluster with Increased Effect, Energy Shield, and Elemental Resistance (THIS IS PROBABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT. EVEN 25% EFFECT IS FINE, YOU REALLY NEED THE FLAT ES FROM THIS.) Once you have these you can CI swap, but truthfully I'd just farm out the gear and full swap once you have it together. It's not an insane undertaking to just farm out for a bit on the midgame setup. An alternate option if it's cheaper is running a Void Fangs Claw. This gives you Chaos Damage and can allow you to use Unholy Trinity support, freeing up some space on tree and letting you ignore resistances instead of inverting them. The alt tree doesn't go too in depth on the major differences, but you can start stacking flat lightning and chaos damage on Murderous Eye Jewels and scale your damage in a way that is less reliant on crit. Typically best used alongside an Elegant Hubris jewel. You should also get a better source of Wither, particularly a Medium Crit Cluster with Overwhelming Malice. For Spectres, as mentioned earlier, you really want these Spectres. The list is as follows: - Perfect Forest Warrior gives us Onslaught and Culling Strike. - Perfect Judgemental Spirit gives us Discipline, but Perfect Guardian Turtle is a fine alternative should you want tu run it. - Stygian Silverback will be our Frenzy generation. You can use the sword mastery instead and swap the Spectre out for something else but I prefer the strike range at this level of investment. - Blasphemer gives us a big Smite aura VERY IMPORTANT - TO SUMMON 4 SPECTRES YOU NEED A LEVEL 25 RAISE SPECTRE AND ANNOINTED DEATH ATTUNEMENT. There are other ways to skin this cat (Congregation Support, Empower) but this is the one I chose as it gives us more supports to help keep them alive and near us for buff uptime. To achieve a level 25 gem we get: - A level 21 Raise Spectre - +2 From our Helmet - +2 From Bonemeld You can even get more than this, but I found sorta diminishing returns. There are some crazy spectres out there though, so do your own research and customize your spectre setup to your liking. The only hard mandatory spectre IMO is Blasphemer. Everything else is taste. As for our Animate Guardian, there are some notable swaps to make if you can afford it. Kingmaker - Swapping this out for Relentless Fury would be huge for damage. 50% Critical Strike Multiplier, Culling Strike, and 10 Fortify is very solid. Lets us swap one of our supports to something higher damage and gives us a huge amount of crit multi. Typically farily expensive though. Garb of the Ephemeral - This gets you Crit Immunity while your Animate Guardian is nearby. Not technically full uptime, so I didn't include it in the config, but you'll definitely notice it on crit maps. Alternatively Gruthkul's Pelt - Keeps your AG alive with 10% regen. Use this if your AG keeps dying like a chud. Shaper Helmet - Shaper Helmets have a modifier that says Nearby Enemies Take 6% increased Elemental Damage. This elevates to 9%. Can be very worthwhile pickup if someone failed their elevating of a mod, otherwise stick with the 6%, I don't think it's worth an expensive orb to roll for. You could also go for a corrupted helmet that gives enemies Malediction, and that is better but a LOT more expensive. Brittle/Sap Exarch Boots - Brittle gives us 2% Base Critical Strike Chance when an enemy stands on it. Most noticable in single target, I haven't included it in the POB at all. Though it's for sure noticable when you put it on. If you're sub-crit cap, this can push you over the edge. If you're over crit cap, you can use Sap boots. These make the enemy deal 20% less damage when standing on the ground it produces. Again, not included in the defensive calculations but definitely noticable. CHANGELOG 7/28/2026 Swapped Bonemeld for a different amulet. The res reduction during midgame seemed hard for people to use, as Chaos Resistance in particular is rare. Yoke and Ashes are both cheap, crafted rare also works. Updated Midgame Minion damage cluster to reflect a 25% energy shield cluster. Get more mods if you can. Added in an Ancestral Call swap. I used it from campaign and didn't unequip it. Period. Added in some crafting steps to Clusters alongside the Allflame specific tech. Minion Helm Crafting section updated Added in an alternate 1h swap with cheap uniques and a mention of the Blasphemer spectre. CHANGELOG 8/2/26 Swapped claw for Foil due to increased strike range and crit multi. Updated crafting sections to reflect Foil swap. Swapped Prismatic tincture for Rosethorn (allows less investment into crit, usable in single target very nicely). Updated Ancestral Call in the main links to reflect it's swap in mapping use. Added Blasphemer mention into 1h swap and early mapping section as something to look out for on spectres for dmg. CHANGELOG 10/25/2026 Removed metions of socket color requirements Added Blasphemer smite in as dmg Swapped to Determination on player instead of turtle to reflect my personal preferences Optimized trees with slyghtly more efficient pathing CHANGELOG 11/3/26 Culled notes section of 1h swap and socket color mentions. Added in early game spectre section alongside a midgame Ancestral Guardian section. Covered weapon crafting in early game. Trimmed various unnecessary bits and warnings. CHANGELOG 11/4/26 Optimized the leveling trees. Edited notes section to echo some things from the tree/gem section.