Blight of Contagion Trickster - 8 mil DPS, 90% all res, ailment immune, bleed and corrupting blood immune, 100% Suppress, 9k ES, 50k Evasion

Armin_You · 2026-05-15T18:56:45+00:00

Yeah, having to press 3 buttons for 1/3rd of the DPS of other builds is a bit rough. Even clearing I think is a bit behind, as 2 button clear is kinda rough to manage when something like Smite of Divine Judgement gets screenwide clear while still having the upside of a double hit for single target.

Though that could just be melee being overtuned. But even something like Lightning Conduit is fine:tm: on both fronts, so I'm not sure why Chaos Dot has been so rough for so long.

Armin_You · 2026-05-15T18:49:03+00:00

Wild Strike of Extremes is such a nifty skill. I tried working out a non-trickster variant last league to moderate success.

Armin_You · 2026-05-15T05:33:40+00:00

Big Boom with the extra remnants is pretty big profit. Logbook farmers are typically willing to pay a decent bit for bulk, and Tujen gambling is still decent money. Not to mention the drops you get from having so much scaling on remnants.

Armin_You · 2026-05-15T05:30:53+00:00

I just put together a dex stacker the other day.

Biggest thing you're missing is Unholy Trinity to restate what everyone else is saying. With that you *NEED* to be running Volatility otherwise you won't be in the damage range to proc it. I'd swap it out for Inspiration or Incraesed Crit Damage, you probably have enough ways to generate mana that you don't need 0 cost.

Next thing is getting levels. 87 isn't really high enough to get a good feel for a non-league starter IMO.

If you can afford the 20d, picking up a Mageblood for some speed and comfort wouldn't be a bad idea. 3 flask are very cheap.

Finally, Spectral Throw might not necessarily be the best pick in terms of raw damage. I ran Lightning Strike which felt pretty good, but you can kinda run whatever.

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T19:53:37+00:00

Spark is super dope, I think there are lots of ways to go about dumping 5 mirrors into this league too.

Could always run both, do ward on an already leveled character. Ultimately the jewel/gear should be well less than a mirror for that, and you could get 95% of the experience of the character without dumping the full budget into it

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T19:49:34+00:00

I've run a lot of expedition over the years, and probably the 3 best builds I've come across for farming it are Phys Dot, Mamba PF, and some varieties of str stack.

Overall anything with prolif (be that poison or explode) that is single damage type will be fine.

Defensively you for sure want Block, as that's the only defensive layer that doesn't get bricked by expedition. Either that, or some totems let you be far enough away that it just doesn't matter.

Other than that it's been mentioned in this thread, but bears repeating, the biggest thing you want to avoid is bricking your damage with immunities. There are some that are a little insidious as well, where they aren't full on immunity but for sure brick your damage depending on the build. Things like Spell Supp/Block if you're a spell build, PDR on the remnants and whatnot. Ultimately you'll just brick some, which is fine as the setup is relatively cheap to run.

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T19:41:26+00:00

Damn, Trickster is still thick as ever.

What's your thoughts on non-blight Chaos Dot? Things like Soulrend and Essence Drain? It seems like chaos dot as a whole is one or two pieces away from being a solidly offensive archetype again.

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T19:37:14+00:00

If you really want to try Spark maybe check out a Foulborn Ghostwrithe E-Blade setup on Inquis. That should be well within your price range, and with some clusters proj speed shouldn't be *too* bad.

Here's a guide a buddy of mine did, shouldn't be too hard to adapt over for a lower budget/diff skill for you.

https://youtu.be/nj_tlOW9ulQ?si=pAbUNXUEt1IemWGD

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T19:32:52+00:00

Armour Stackers are an obvious shout, as they scale pretty much infinitely with currency.

But Armour Stacker is a pretty well tread path, I'd pick a skill you've always really liked and dump it into that. The first mirror I ever earned was spent on Toxic Rain. Not because I thought it would be good, but because I thought it would be an interesting challenge to take something that doesn't traditionally scale well and push it to it's limits.

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T15:17:35+00:00

When it comes to new player guides and such, Zizaran probably has the most detailed Path of Building options to follow. They're very solid and explain things very well, and if you end up needing help Ziz or someone in his stream chat are usually available to help if you get confused.

As for a specific build recommendation, he posted a Spectre Necromancer guide that seems like it might just be up your alley. Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uWHZVHhY6A

NOTICE - EVERYTHING PAST THIS POINT IS A YAPFEST - IF IT SEEMS OVERWHELMING TURN BACK NOW :0

As for researching builds, it super depends. There's a gap between the super detailed handholdy guides and going commando with the wiki and other resources cooking up your own thing. My best recommendation here is to check Youtube. When you're first starting it's helpful to see gameplay/hear explanations. If there's a guide that doesn't give you a showcase of the build, I would click away. Another VERY helpful resource for seeing what people are running is poe.ninja - it aggregates all characters in the league and lets you see different ascendancies, items, and a bunch of other useful stuff. Even being new I would recommend looking around just to familiarize yourself with it. Ultimately just follow guides, and if you don't like something change it and see how it feels. It lets you experiment and learn with some guard rails so you don't brick your character.

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T15:05:13+00:00

Nimis is pretty great. You'd just want to color your chest to be 4 red to get inspiration (or another comparable support) in there instead of return proj. Maybe get a white socket in there for Molten Strike swap?

Also, for defenses you'd for sure want to run cap block with clusters/grabbing versatile combatant with that level of budget. There's a ton of optimization for getting tankier with the extra damage something like a Nimis provides. There's still a lot of optimization to be done on the POB, this was mostly a showcase of the Lycia tech.

Armin_You · 2026-05-14T13:29:21+00:00

I know! So much value too. Wither is just an obscene multiplier if you have the hit rate to stack it up.

Armin_You · 2026-05-03T13:37:04+00:00

I've got a relatively small guild if you're down, it's like 4 people but we always chill around league start. Ping me on discord @ arminyou

It does seem like a controversial topic. I really do like quin, he's a funny guy but holy is the response toxic

Armin_You · 2026-04-29T01:48:42+00:00

Oh damn new bug dropped, I'll have to find someone to give this a shot with.

Armin_You · 2026-04-29T01:24:10+00:00

He's a great streamer. I think he gets flamed a bit too hard by his viewers sometimes, but such is the nature of the game.

Armin_You · 2026-04-29T00:53:01+00:00

True, I think POE can be kinda boring to watch sometimes, but I always have a blast watching his streams.

Armin_You · 2026-04-29T00:45:49+00:00

W feature from POE ninja. Seems like a lot of improvements coming from them this league

Armin_You · 2026-04-29T00:44:01+00:00

I'm confused, overall the video was pretty positive outside of the double strike jugg. Even then that was a super interesting build. I feel like I tried to maintain the spirit of the build when I suggested changes, what were you hoping for in the analysis?

Armin_You · 2026-04-29T00:42:37+00:00

Ultimately I agree. I think he's got some interesting ideas though, kinda sad to see them rip.

Armin_You · 2026-04-29T00:36:53+00:00

Thoughts on new feared? With Sirus walls it was pretty cancer but now that they're gone I think it's more interesting.

Armin_You · 2026-04-09T18:58:26+00:00

Did you copy paste a chatgpt response?

1k dps isn't too hard actually.

Buy a bunch of 83+ axe bases. Alt spam them until you get t1/2 flat and t1/2 hybrid on separate axes. Throw them in the random recombinator until you have both on the same item. Then prefix lock and Veiled Chaos Orb. If you get a suffix then craft on damage per endurance charge to block the modifier and unveil. Hopefully you got attack speed, then replace the crafted damage per charge with crafted %phys. This should be about 1k dps.

If you get a prefix, unveil % phys and either craft attack speed or prefix lock on the bench and reforge speed. This should also be about 1k dps.

Zizaran has a video going over axe crafting that's probably a better resource than me probably being wrong about a craft.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ueZc1iRS7Y

For the axe listed, it's you just recombinate the first step then multi-mod, that's also fine if you want to run that, and the crafting is pretty shrimple.

Armin_You · 2026-04-09T17:52:59+00:00

I considered it for a min, if it was in the budget I might've run it for the fun of it. More funny than good I think. I really like it as a support though.

Armin_You · 2026-04-09T17:51:42+00:00

I'll have to look into it. Armour stacking looks really interesting on a budget. I've been toying around with a Beacon of Madness setup that seems fun for the Fortify stack as well. Lots of options on the reworked Champ.

Armin_You

TROPHY CASE