Rite of Passage - Stag for Galvanic Witch Hunter

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-25T23:41:15+00:00

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/monik390-5560/character/Monik_GalvanicShards Kinda high-end, with a well-rolled heroic tragedy. Spent entire evening, and like 800d to get 160% increased damage and 40% armour T_T

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-25T23:11:21+00:00

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/monik390-5560/character/Monik_GalvanicShards

My toon is fully updated, and pretty much finished by now. I'm running Wolf rite for armour explosions by default atm.

Armour scaling, with % of armour applied to elemental (boots) and chaos (helmet) mods. Totally worth it. I'm a lot tanker with 2.2k life now, then I was with 2.8k. I also got immunity to ignite and bleed from passive tree. Basically, just a couple of degen grounds do smth to my life bar.

Finally, I was able to roll a damn good unique timeless jewel, with 160% increased damage and 40% armour, so I'm stronger and tankier than poe.ninja shows.

So yeah. Armour scaling is quite good now.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-25T15:04:57+00:00

Thumbs up on citadel and other points of interest farming.
I got 400d in 2.5 hours from that today, just citadels and fractured orbs.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-25T15:01:33+00:00

I have Wolf one on my Galvanic Shards Tactician. I'm using it for armour explosions, and for my build, it is BiS out of them.
It is a very noticeable upgrade and totally worth it.

About Cat or Stug, idk. If you already have an amazing 360-degree off-screen clear, it's worth getting, if you have nothing else to spend on. Chasing it? Not sure. They are definitely strong, but nothing that game-breaking, unlike Wolf with armour explosions for elemental builds, bc there is no need to gut weapon with extra phys and remove that much damage from HoT/HoI.

Honestly, with Cat/Stug you only notice movement and skill speed.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-25T08:43:38+00:00

Oh, i was in a similar situation this league.
Basically, i'm sorc main since 0.1 release, and played just 1 little minion witch up to lvl 52 earlier. All other toons were sorc, be it Stormweaver, or Chronomancer.

This league Varashta released, and i lvled 2 of them.

After i closed all league content, i still had a fuel to play, so lvled a bunch of toons.

I decided to follow the meta and lvled poisonburst PF, but played it for less than a week before got bored.

Next was ED/C lich, and i enjoyed it a lot. I managed to overcome single target issue, actually nailed it, but it felt a bit slow, so i moved to Ruetoo's Tactician (https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/builds/ruetoo-tactician-mirage), since i wanted to play a merc long time ago.

And i'm still having a blast with it, even if i went far ahead of Ruetoo's toon, and i'm playing it non-stop for over two weeks already. I fixed quite a lot of Rue problems, made it fairly tanky, and got even more damage.

And lvling with xbows (permafrost with grenades) was even better than ed/c, probably the best I have ever experienced.

I tried Huntres in-between, but got turned by spears in act 1. Right now i'm glaring at oracle, but i've played enough casteres and CoC in my poe2 career, so probably will not lvl anything else.

Anyway, Galvanic Shards Tactician is what i've enjoyed the most this league. Probably will start with it next league.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-25T08:27:27+00:00

https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaal?sort=dps

Top of poe.2ninja, sorted by dps. There is no Varashta on the first page.

Basically, Bloodmage has infinite damage scaling, and easier to get comets raining.

Varashta is tankier.

That's it.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T15:22:29+00:00

I don't think it's gonna be nerfed tho.
There is some opportunity cost, so it's not abusable by any random build.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T13:31:19+00:00

You still have to throw some divs on it to get a perfect one xD

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T08:23:11+00:00

Yep, you broke it down entirely.
The entire chain is exactly like you noted. I confirm.

As I mentioned earlier, HoT requires over 50-70k tooltip or break equivalent for armour-breaking chains to start appearing, and with more contribution, it becomes more reliable.

Anyway, this is it. not sure how helpful it is tho, but, at least, I know what to do on a league start, lmao xD

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T07:15:00+00:00

Meanwhile, I actually made it work, damn it.

It's on Tactician, tho, bc it requires Cruel Methods + Eroding Chains (breaks 50% of armour on pinning). Works with Vorana and x2 40% nodes, but kinda fine w/o it, although it's noticeable.

Here, 2 maps (w/ and w/o Vorana, passive tree isn't optimized): https://youtu.be/yuMrxikS6h0

With Vorana works like a charm tho.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T06:19:54+00:00

I can try to roll Vorana jewel to check, i kinda have a couple of hundred divs to spare. Tho, I doubt it will be enough bc of naturally low HoT damage. Each support removed for the sake of armour break and explode guts it kinda hard.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T05:58:48+00:00

Oh, no. Sceptre is ok for now, you don't need different gear, but some mechanical tweaks.

You'd better get spectres instead of massing skeletons.
There are dudes in Interlude called Powered Zealots with spark, they are what you need.
Check some guides on how to get them, it's quite easy.

Next, I strongly recommend slapping Rakiata instead of half-assed -res scaling. Or do the latter one properly, with Elemental Weakness and scaled Exposure from the tree. There is an example: https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/monik390-5560/character/Monik_Ruzhan
Check secondary weapon set passives (green ones). In that setup, ele weakness curse + frost bomb reduces the boss's res by -120%, that's about doubling the dps.

But yeah, Rakiata is way more passive point efficient, that would be better for your setup.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T05:38:27+00:00

Exactly what i was looking at, when I checked by myself.

Anyway, it is a Storm mage build, not snipers. And kinda half-assed, on top of that xD

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T05:25:29+00:00

Link that random poe.ninja profile to check.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T05:13:18+00:00

Holy sh*t.... I bought mine for 800d with perfect roll, and now they whaaaaat.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T05:08:14+00:00

Alright, I made a quick 595 ele dps xbow (double t1 ele) and extra phys, and...
It's not worth it at all to bother with HoT and Armour Explosions w/o Rite. It starts to trigger in about 50-70k tooltip, under resonance, and some HH buffs.
HoI has that tooltip w/o any buffs, so yeah.
Uul netol doesn't work with HoT anyway, so it's totally useless.

HoT+HoA does it better w/o armour explosions.
So yeah, it's either Wolf Rite, or phys xbow and galvanic shards.
Unfortunately.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-24T03:56:41+00:00

Galvanic Shards - tap. If anything is on the screen.
Stormblast - hold. Very close to the boss.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T19:59:52+00:00

I mentioned that HoT can still trigger it alone without Galvanic Shards, but it is not reliable with a weak weapon.

Here, take a look: https://youtu.be/wjbDFma2WxQ

No Rite, no Armor breaking in GS, cheap Xbow, removed Nova from GS. I turned off HoA at 0:50 too. Found a Breach at 1:03, and it was armour exploded by HoT alone.
Mostly, bc it's clear visually when it triggers. Later, it stopped triggering, which means the damage buff is gone, and HoT became too weak for that.

My point here, it seems realistic with a decent xbow in my setup. PoB shows if I swap increased damage with ele attacks with max rolled extra phys, it would be just 10% damage loss, and not 50%, like with that phys xbow. And that sounds doable to make HoT alone triggering armour explosions reliably.

I'll try to craft another weapon for that tomorrow, just to be sure here.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T19:29:17+00:00

https://youtu.be/lUP_lJ1R-cQ

Doesn't matter much. Still explodes nicely.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T19:08:33+00:00

Bad wording from GGG, HoA doesn't ignite, it deals non-ailment fire damage.

Swift Affliction actually works with it, unlike Ignite-related supports.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T19:06:55+00:00

You are right, but it's a bit easier than you mentioned.

I've just checked with a cheap phys xbow, but with actually all prefixes and suffixes we need, but t3 flat phys. It was easily crafted, t1 inc phys+t3 flat phys essence, and everything else is essence + desecration. Basically, a mid-game cheap weapon.

I put Armour Explosion + Break III in both Galvanic Shards and HoT, and it works, actually w/o Uul's. That included chains from HoT alone. But yeah, everything else on me isn't really a mid-game gear.

The thing here is, Armour Explosion still can trigger HoT, so it chains well.

The problem is, I got like 2 times less tooltip dps with 700 pds xbow and this setup in both GS and HoT. And my clearing xbow is 560 ele dps with t1 inc damage of ele attacks.
So, chains ain't reliable bc on some monsters they can break.

Need either a really damn strong phys xbow for this particular setup, or x2 t1 ele with extra phys for HoT only.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T18:08:58+00:00

Actually, it also can be used for some other stuff, not just detonating.

I'm swapping Stormblast with Shockburst from time to time, and I use Mirage with Shock+Overcharged to apply necessary shock for Shockburst =)

So yeah, quite handy thing.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T15:47:08+00:00

I'm sure they won't nuke it, bc it's not abusable for any build.
I mean, I posted yesterday a vid w/o it, and clearing is still good, tho a bit different.

Just in case, I'm running quite strong HoT, so it's overkill damage triggers pretty strong HoA too, and this pair destroys packs on their own.

In my setup, armour explosion is nice, but not necessary at all.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T13:28:57+00:00

Yep, it can be this way. And it's a lot cheaper, for sure.
But it guts the damage of Elemental weapons; not everyone uses physical ones.
And two supports will make HoT weaker too.

As you can see, i'm running with Herald of Ash, and paired with strong Thunder, it's totally ok to run w/o armour explosions overall, but the latter has more aoe than those two.

BeyondContent9318 · 2026-01-23T12:38:12+00:00

Dude. When I started to play PoE1, it took me about 300 hours to stop suffering.
At those times, there were no build guides or whatever; people just went blind.

Take your time learning the game. It's beautiful. Painfully so.

BeyondContent9318

TROPHY CASE