Hello! I'd like to present my final build of 3.23, the Life Stacking Penance Brand Inquisitor. This is unequivocally the strongest build I've ever played in PoE, and I've loved optimizing it and completing my 40/40 challenges and all content in the game with it. I rate this build 10/10 for damage, 9/10 for tankiness, and 8/10 for clear speed.

This guide is an update to my older version found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/194a9cr/life_stacking_penance_brand_inquisitor_midbudget/

Since then I've made a number of changes and optimizations to the build, and thought it was worth a new post and guide.

First, let's start with a PoB and demo video showcasing some of the capabilities of the build.

PoB: https://pobb.in/yfxGLt5oBP0B
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbOPLD1t0oo

Pros:

• Well rounded, can complete any content in the game except Death Vault and similar meme Valdo maps.
• 300m+ DPS. Delete everything.
• Immortal to anything that isn't a true one-shot (explained in detail in Defences section)
• Reasonable clear speed due to Herald of Ash and Explode.
• I've successfully completed every Valdo map I've attempted, including 10% less damage per item (remove Defiance of Destiny)

Cons:

• Relatively low max hit defence compared to builds like armorstacker. Survives base Uber Shaper slam and Atziri double flameblast, but can be oneshot by them with damage mods. For this reason NOT recommended to farm voided Valdo maps.
• Clear speed requires high investment to feel good. Low budget versions are 6/10 clear speed. Would recommend another build if mapping is all you want to do.

Let's go into detail about how the build scales both damage and survivability.

Damage Scaling
First and foremost, we abuse Rathpith Globe to gain both crit chance and spell damage based on our maximum Life. With 10,738 life in my current build, Rathpith gives 535% Increased Spell Damage and 535% Increased Critical Strike Chance! Bonkers for one item. To complement this, we use The Adorned unique jewel combined with many magic jewels scaling tons of Life and Critical Damage. Each jewel socket gives 17% Life and 34+% Crit Multiplier. Finally, we scale as much Cast Speed as possible since it increased Penance Brand activation frequency, and multiple sources of "Physical Damage Added As Extra X" to increase our base damage. Penance Brand of Dissipation is the current strongest spell in the game and will surely be nerfed after this league, but the build could be easily tweaked to function with any Brand skill if necessary. Rathpith's downside of spending 10% of Life whenever we cast a skill means that while the build would be fine with something like self-cast Arc, we really prefer to use Brands since they activate many times for one cast. It should also be noted that Inquisitor's Inevitable Judgement allowing our crit strikes to ignore enemy resistances also means we cannot scale sources of reducing enemy resists - don't try to use Elemental Weakness or similar.

Defensive Scaling
Here's where the build gets fun. You may notice that this build doesn't use any of some of the most common defensive sources - we have little armor, evasion, no spell suppression, and just 76/75/75 resists. So how are we so tanky? Our resistance to one-shots comes mostly through a huge HP pool and the use of Petrified Blood. With 5900 unreserved HP, 2500 ES, and Petrified Blood, a single hit needs to deal around 12,400 damage after mitigation to kill us while at full health. Given that we also have Adrenaline (10% phys mitigation), 39% of physical damage taken as elemental, and extra elemental resistance through Ruby and Sapphire flasks, there ends up being not very much that can deal that much in a single hit.

What about multiple hits? That's where our many sources of regen come into play. The baseline is Life and ES regeneration. Due to the Corrupted Soul keystone gained via Glorious Vanity, all incoming damage is split equally between our HP and ES pools. We have over 2,500/s regen of both pools (with both RF and Approaching Flames activated) adding to 5k/s regen there. In addition, since we reserve slightly less than 55% of our max HP we can never reach "full life" status and thus we have permanent overleech. Leech is capped at 20% of your max HP/s, and with our absurd damage and a single source of leech (amulet corruption) we're at that number all the time we're attacking. That's another 2k+/s life regen.

Next, we use Defiance of Destiny. I'm sure most reading this are familiar with how bonkers this amulet is. In the absolute worst case scenario where we are 1HP and 0ES before a hit, Defiance will give us 2,300 life back before the hit arrives. So any hit less than that can never kill us (remember Petrified Blood still applies here, so add another 40% to that, +other mitigation, etc)

OK, but Petrified Blood applies damage over time based on the incoming hit right? What if there's too many incoming hits for our massive life regen to keep up with and we bleed out? This is also impossible due to our investment in Recoup. Via 3 points on the tree and one ring affix we have "34% of Damage Taken Recouped As Life". It's very important for this calculation to note that Petrified Blood applies after Recoup is calculated. Thus if a 1,000 damage hit applies to our life, Petrified Blood will prevent 400 of that damage BUT Recoup still sees the full 1,000. A level 22 Petrified Blood then bleeds for 74% of the damage prevented over 4 seconds - in other words, .4 * .74 = 29.6% of the damage of the initial hit will be dealt over 4 seconds. Since our Recoup is higher than that 29.6% and also lasts for 4 seconds, it's impossible to ever die to Petrified Blood damage over time

FAQ

How expensive is your build? In its current state, around 3 mirrors-ish.

That's too much money. Is there a budget version? Yes! Check the PoB, I've included a second skill tree that does not use the Adorned. It's less damage but obviously much cheaper. I started this build with only a Mageblood + ~20d of gear and was instantly able to kill Uber bosses. It should be completely possible to build without the Mageblood also, just get an abyss belt with a ton of resists. The only hard requirement for the build is Rathpith Globe, everything else (even Defiance of Destiny and Annihilation's Approach) could be replaced with random rares and you'll still have a decent time. Important note that if you can't afford gloves with 50% damage conversion on them, you must use Physical to Lightning support gem instead of Awakened Added Fire. You'll also be unable to use Herald of Ash, just drop it until you can afford using it while still maintaining over 55% unreserved life. (This means you could also lose the life reservation on rings)

How do you manage to run so many auras? Zealotry is free with Eternal Blessing support since it's our only official aura. Maintaining just over 55% life unreserved is very important, so in order to run all of Vitality, Petrified Blood, Tempest Shield, and Herald of Ash, you need to have the Champion of the Cause wheel taken, you need a level 5 Enlighten (I do this with a level 4 and a +1 all gems corruption), and you need a single magic jewel with 2% reservation efficiency (which doubles to 4 with the Adorned). If you can't afford all this, drop Herald of Ash until you can. Clear is still just fine without it. If you have a level 4 Enlighten and nothing else, you can drop the entire Champion of the Cause wheel and run everything except Herald of Ash.

How do you get charges? You have Power/Frenzy/Endurance all ticked in PoB. All three are gained via Charms or the TWWT jewel. Frenzy on hit, Power Charge on critical strike, Endurance on stun. All three will be up permanently since our hit rate and damage is so high. If charms are removed from the game alternative means of generating will be necessary!

You have 25% shock selected, is that PoB warrioring? It's actually on the conservative side. I have a screenshot of a 44% Shock and 30% Chill on Uber Maven. This build does a lot of damage, and shock is sort of a "rich get richer" status effect where the more damage you already have the better it gets.

What are important boxes I need to tick in order to build this myself? There's a number of things you need to get from somewhere for the build to function effectively. It doesn't have to be exactly where I have it in the build, but just somewhere. These things include: Power/Frenzy/Endurance charge generation, multiple Life Regeneration Rate sources, all the unique jewels, Lightning Damage Leeched as Life (either from amulet corrupt or on a Glorious Vanity), and if you want to exactly copy my build you need one magic jewel with Reservation Efficiency corruption.

You used to run Spectres, why not anymore? There's just no way to keep them alive in super rippy juiced maps, I got tired of resummoning and found something else to do with the sockets. If you're only wanting to boss with this build you can absolutely still set up a Perfect Spirit of Fortune spectre link for a huge damage boost. Just reduce the CWDT setup to a 2-link CWDT-Immortal Call.

Why Galvanic Field in your CWDT setup? I'm just experimenting with random stuff and it adds a decent bit of free damage. Could easily replace with a defensive curse, or even another PBoD if you want to AFK some simulacrum waves.

Can you upgrade this further? Easily. I only have a 3-passive and a 5-passive voices right now. If you're rich enough you could use 3x 1-passive voices and fit an entire extra Voices in the build. My jewels also aren't perfect, my Adorned isn't perfect. If you can get a 150% Adorned and all of your magic jewels corrupted with Reservation Efficiency you can unspec Champion of the Cause and get another 5 points to play with. :)

Can I ask you another question? Absolutely. @TordanaIsRaging in game, or happy to answer anything here.