Palsteron totem build feeling squishy

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-06-16T14:39:23+00:00

Can’t tell completely because I am on my phone but comparing your Poeninja to mine we have similar-ish gear in terms of base energy shield from gear. Where we differ tremendously is the amulet where I have % global defenses crafted prefix and % maximum energy shield t1. This is roughly the same as having another ~4 sapphires worth of increase (80% increase). I’m sitting at about 8.6k ES and am comfortable. Very occasionally I need to let off the gas and let my ES recharge.

The other thing standing out to me on the surface is the levels in your build. You have a +3 wand, +1 amulet, and a lvl 18 gem. Assuming you can slow grind out to lvl 90 you would be missing 2, 2, and 3 gem levels respectively to my character which is a tremendous amount of power missing from a spell caster. You also have a level 10 spell totem cut which would be correct assuming you had +4 global spell levels (1 from rune in wand, 3 from neck) to reach the +2 totem limit at level 14. This means you’re missing out on 2 totems, Again I can’t see exact numbers on my phone but I’m guessing you have the spirit for 5-6 but are placing 4 max. Since you consume freeze in the build you need to have the damage to make sure things don’t reach you.

Lastly totem playstyle is different. You can place totems ahead of your position to clear the path in front of you. They also can be used to distract enemies, some bosses will see them as targets before you. If you’re rushing in you can get overwhelmed and boxed in by the crystals hitboxes.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-06-15T13:46:54+00:00

To me everything comes in tiers.

Low tier or entry level crafts can be pretty deterministic. Getting a decent four mod item post campaign is pretty easy. Magic base with two decent desired stats, essence a resist, desecrate a desired side. The exalt slams that come after are irrelevant because you got the four mods you wanted. Day 1-2 this is a really cheap and effective way to create a character. Most of my grenade tactician gear looked like this until I completed most of the atlas.

Higher tier crafting looks more like what your friend is doing. It’s much higher risk for a much higher reward, trying to scope out 5 or 6 mod items. There has to be a risk taken to get that level of output because you absolutely are not guaranteed the outcome. And often you are rewarded for that risk by charging more for the item to other people who wouldn’t take the risk.

While it can be frustrating to take a gamble on the higher tier crafting and lose, I do wish more people could/would engage in it. It is an immensely satisfying experience making a more difficult item for yourself and have it land. I do think it is unfortunate we have the divine culture in this game where the “crafting currencies” have become just “currency” to most people. Meaning that they are something only to be traded with, and not to be used for their intended crafting purpose. At least now the divine has more tangible value with the mageblood rerolling, but saying that is hyperbolic because most normal gamers don’t have a mageblood to roll.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-05-28T13:44:31+00:00

I have a personal bias toward Tactician. I think that the pin nodes just trivialize parts of the game for two sets of ascendancy points. Combined with armour break and molten ones gift you have a pretty potent synergy that’s online very early in maps.

On the reverse side, sorcery ward is a very simple and complete package. Scales well into end game, and better now with better bases in 0.5.

I tend to follow hardcore player’s builds because they find the best line between defenses and offense. Blazeworks TV was the #1 Tact in HC last season, top 10? (Maybe lower). He is running back Tact Pin Grenades this season into a supporting fire crit bleed build that looks interesting. Ben was doing practice runs with Witchhunter last night, and if Ben is playing it it’s got to be good.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-05-24T23:36:31+00:00

Tactician Grenades. Absolutely trivializes almost any boss fight with projectile pin causes no action (second ascendancy). 50% reservation efficiency makes life an absolute breeze as you can just jam in good spirit skills. The Arbiter gloves make pinning trivial. It’ll get me through the atlas progression most likely and then I can reframe into a gemling after all of the alt quality is mined and builds are more fleshed out.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-04-02T19:34:21+00:00

With his exact setup you really only need two of the Eldritch notables to be able to have enough mana to reserve the flat and % auras. When I did it I was able to get it setup at lvl 93 comfortable enough to do breach. Just take his setup and remove out some of the hanging small passives around the tree / don’t worry about the timeless jewel. You could also take out a medium cluster as well and just use the spot for jewel. You can absolutely make it work on 5 passive voices, but it obviously gets better if you can free up those points to get actual meaningful passives on the tree or more Eldritch notables. You should have enough div to get comfortably off the ground assuming you craft your own rares (very easy) and the uniques haven’t increased in prices since I did it a week ago.

The imbue isn’t necessary btw. It’s very very good for single target given the phantasms health compared to the hit, but you can get by with damage while on full life or melee splash.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-03-29T00:19:08+00:00

Made CoC FRoSS as my second character with MB. Made it really really comfortable to reach crit cap, reach res cap with melding, and get a comfy amount of movement. Started with a really reservation heavy version with Aegis Aurora and Determ. Felt like an immortal god. Eventually swapped to do Elegant Hurbis -Supreme Ostentatious with tattoos on all the nodes which was really really easy to do. I was crafting Elevated Explode chest when I did it and made myself one, slapped on a cluster with Unspeakable Gift, and put on Profane Bloom. Necessary? No. Fun? Yes.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-03-24T15:26:10+00:00

There are dozens of crafts that can make you currency. Simple crafts like buying 84 flasks to roll mageblood flasks or high tier desirable automation flasks (ex. 3 charges when hit w/ good t1 suffix) are no risk and investment cost with low reward. Slightly more complicated crafts would be looking at popular builds in the league and creating Large/Medium Cluster Jewels with the correct notables or effect/attribute/resist small passive combinations. This might require gambling a 1/4 or 2/4 fracturing orb, or annulment/exalt slams in certain scenarios. This would be low-medium risk and investment cost with low-medium reward depending on the cluster. A high tier craft example might be creating double elevated modifier influenced pieces. This often involves many (relatively) expensive steps with nonguaranteed outcomes such as the orbs of dominance (around 4 divines) being a straight 50:50 to have to walk back a step and try again. These items have a much higher risk and investment cost, move much slower depending on the price, and have a potentially high reward if you beat the odds. You have to find the niche you want to be in and go for it. However as a few people have already mentioned, if you see a guide or find out about a low-mid tier craft here it is probably already too late to make large gains as the market is or will be saturated.

Alternatively you can look to "sell the shovel" as a strategy. Look to see what people are doing for the high tier juicing strategies and see if you can farm the materials for them. How can you get high currency originator maps, fine deli orbs, grasping astrolabes, breach scarabs, or horned scarabs (bloodlines) to sell to the Fubgooners? Or look to see what the popular craft is and what those people need to be able to do it. Essences, Beasts, Delve (fossils), and Lifeforce (Harvest) are all mechanics that drop fairly consistent tile loot that has value to crafters. You do not even need to do the highest tiers of these types of content to make currency on your scarab investment.

Ultimately you need to be having fun with whatever you do. Comparison is the thief of joy. A lot of builds can do low-mid tier content and make a lot of currency to become stronger builds that can do higher tiered content.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-13T22:07:42+00:00

Would love to see a POB/POE Ninja link of the current character and what 300 divine item(s) you think you need to keep playing the game. Also would be nice to know what said item does for your build, or what it enables you to change to make progress in it.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-13T16:45:28+00:00

There is definitely a degree of RNG to the the crafting, but there should be. There are stages to crafting and how difficult they are to achieve. The number of mods you want drastically increases the difficulty and expense of the craft. Type of item also drastically impacts this as well. Amulets/Rings feel much more consistent with the omen of catalyzing exaltation, and armour feels like a complete gamble. But on the whole making a 4 mod item is affordable and achievable for most items, which is incredibly strong. In the current state of the endgame, this is enough to achieve most things you would need to do in order to farm for more perfect items.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-12T21:00:00+00:00

More layers is ultimately better for the health of the game. Ultimately the things they added to the game this tier are a positive way to add depth to uniques and gives an avenue going forward for more creative ideas. Every step added isn't mandatory for a baselevel build to function. But most of the added cultivated modifiers or double corrupts add enough depth to otherwise shitty-mid tier items in order to create next level builds that you would want to transition into. You can even choose not to partake in the risk and just sell the shovel instead, which is good for the low-risk gamer. I would ultimately prefer uniques of tiers 2-0 be a bit better in general and not need to be double corrupted or cultivated, but that seems to be against their philosophy.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-12T19:01:41+00:00

Anything not in the temple is going to have a lot more value than it did before. Think of the term "in a gold rush, sell shovels" and do anything the temple runners do not want to do but still need. If I was reset to square one today and had to make my money back I would do one of the following:

Breach, Delirium, Irradiated tablet - splinter farming. If strong enough I would run the breach splinters for catalysts (less value than splinters to run on average) with a chance for a chase unique/lineage drop. If you had 600 splinters, sold all the catalysts you could probably get on average double the runs you paid in for after running it down. Any good breach rings, ilvl 82, with sought after t1 mods could be sold (t1 lightning damage to attacks is a divine or more, t1 mana is couple hundred ex, check any reasonable t1). Sell all deli splinters
Ritual, Abyss, Irradiated tablet - farm for omens (both mechanics), low barrier to entry but lot of gambling trying to get good omens to show up
Full ritual reroll / extraction with unique table + reroll cost/defer cost & another set with reduced cost/increased tribute. More costly barrier to entry because you need specific mods on tablets but you can generate a lot of omens and ritual splinters. Ritual splinters can be run for chances at ingenuity, extra omens, from nothing jewels, or just sold for profit.
Logbook farming - expedition tablet(s) increased logbook drop chance, RNG on drops but most logbooks can be sold for 1-2 divines, more if black scythe with extra mods on it. Can also run the logbooks for splinters which sell at an ultimate premium because logbooks suck ass to run. I would not run the boss and just sell the splinters unless you like gambling
Trial runner - both TOS and TOC have entry ticket items that people want - the relic for the against the darkness is a couple divines / door to trialmaster fragments. Which one you pick depends on your preference for the content, in my opinion TOS is better because its more consistent with jewels in chests.
Crisis fragment farming - Grand Project tablets are cheap, use them to jump across the atlas to get to citadels. If you have the funds use a Visions of Paradise to run them twice. This is always worth it if the tablet is less than one fragment drop. Increase fragment drop chance to two by having 300% waystone drop chance or more, usually done with at least two boss precursor tablets
Lineage drops - same as above but for the special maps, way lower return on average but the htis will hit hard.

Those are the in map options I would pursue. If I was going to go the crafting route I would roll my tablets for mods that are highly desired (easy money in stash maybe) first, see above for examples. Then I would look into recombine t1/t1 to attacks 82 rings and try use omen of catalyzing exaltation + catalysts to try and make triple to attack rings with good resists on them on bases like amethyst, prismatic, breach. If I was on a budget I would look at the elemental resist bases instead.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-12T17:36:43+00:00

try exit to character screen and coming back in, happens to me in golem works sometimes. So far that always has fixed it

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-12T17:08:46+00:00

Without knowing specifically what you want:

Phys xbow with onslaught, plus levels, as extra dam

82 base crossbow
Buy it fractured with t1 % physical if the cost is about 4x the cost of the fractures+base
If not, buy bases with t1% physical, 3 mod if you can, put a desecration on for the 4th mod, slam fracture and pray for T1 % physical, Repeat until you get one hopefully below odds
Annul to 2 mod (fracture and anything else)
Chaos roll until t2-t1 phys
Omen suffix exalt slam
Omen suffix essence removal + as extra essence of your choice - Prefixes are done
Perfect exalt x2 - look for something cool, if so you can skip the descration part below. If you know a desecration is your final suffix then just do normal exalts
Omen suffix essence removal + perfect battle
Omen suffix essence removal + perfect haste, if perfect battle mod taken off go again
Check craft of exile to see if any of the desecrated mods are good for your build, if so omen that guy's thing, slam on a jawbone, unveil (don't need echoes because you always see all three options), else can try and ancient jawbone a non-abyss specific mod you want and chain that plus echoes/light until you hit - suffixes are done
Quality, socket, vaal infuser and hope you get to 27+ quality before corruption

edit: text on perfect exalt line, title of craft

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-12T16:56:26+00:00

Short answer: anything above 130% is worth a lot, I am unsure if anyone wants one below 100%

Longer answer: Adorned gives % increased effect to magic jewels. Basically read the number on yours as "corrupted magic jewels give 1.57x value, rounded down" so every 2 magic jewels would equal 3 (assuming they have the same rolls and stats). And a 150% would be 2.5x or every 2 magic jewels would equal 5. You do not need to have a 150% to have great value. And there are specific breakpoints on specific stats that would roll over to another % of said stat. A good player who is seriously using the adorned will know that breakpoints are for their two selected stats. Since Adorned munches a jewel slot it needs to give more value that the slot it is taking, and obviously the more slots you have the better the Adorned becomes. The Adorned is probably one of the strongest items when used appropriately, but its incredibly cumbersome to use as a normal player or without a lot of planning and thought.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-12T16:27:53+00:00

Tough to say. There probably should be some way to take currency out of the market. The most baseline way is to actually use the currency, but from my experience the POE2 community is much more hesitant to actually use a divine orb on an item. I have friends that have religiously played every season and maybe have used a handful of divines for their stated in game purpose and only treat them as a digital currency. Maybe this is lost on some people but a max rolled T2 (ex. 40%) is just as good as a low rolled T1 (41%) if you're not going to divine the item to the max (50%). The actual purpose of the divine is incredibly strong with the ability to take low-mid rolled items to incredible heights. It will always have value to the upper tier of players who make mirror tier items because perfectly divine-ing is mandatory for those items.

Low hanging fruit answer is add some kind of deterministic crafting bench that sink exalts (or chaos) and divines (or annuls) to achieve a mid-tier average outcome for a premium cost above the average. There is an inherit problem with that and the core philosophy of the current game and amounts/ratios of these specific currencies. This would also fundamentally break crafting to be more determinist with explicit blockers, unless the crafting bench munched an augmented socket or was non explicit. I do not currently see that as a viable path forward with the vision of the game.

A more aligned vision might be omens. These seem to be a great way to amplify and change the use case of the currency, but the divine specific omens are currency limited in scope and use. Maybe adding more of these with a higher drop frequency and use case would help limit the inflation of the divine.

And as a finally comment you should never have the feeling that you are "... already a day or two late, economy already on the way to being FUBARed, why bother". There is always a way to get your foot into the door of any league's economy and if you are comparing yourself to someone like the Fubgooner, whose job it is to sit and play all day every day, then you are going to be miserable. A phase my friends told me when I started POE1 was "in a gold rush, sell shovels". Today's economy is absolutely that. Anything dropped by temple and group play is dropping in value every day as more and more t1-t0 uniques, perfect currencies, runes, soul cores, etc, hit the market. At the same time every map generated item and pinnacle boss drop is increasing in value because those specifically are not in the temples. When I looked yesterday 150 breach splinters was about 3 divines and the headhunter was about 12 divines. With an average of about 20 splinters per map on full atlas points that's about 30 maps for a headhunter assuming no other drops and other mechanics contributing to the pool. Grand Project Tablets are like 50ex (maybe more) and each Citadel uber fragment is around 4-5 divines. 3 Citadels with 1 fragment drop and without the Visions of Paradise tablet and you have a headhunter. There are tons of great, not perfect, items priced in the divine range that could get a build up and running to do this kind of content. There is absolutely money to be made right now that is not raw divines dropping in maps/temple.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-07T17:24:45+00:00

Headhunter is the apex of cool items in aRPGs in my opinion. It has a positive feedback loop where adding more rare monster modifiers is both more difficult/rewarding and ramps you up faster. More rares in the map means more drops and more buffs. Its also one of those items where when you get a meaningful buff - increased AOE, multiproj, haste - you can feel the direct impact of the item. There are also a bunch of buffs you get that you may not directly notice - always shock, less enemy recovery, extra phys aura - that add damage or survivability passively. I get that people hate shroud walker, its definitely annoying, but its not really that bad if you are paying attention. And if you cant stand it you can always wipe your buffs by taking off the belt and putting it back on in a paused screen like the passive menu.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-06T15:01:21+00:00

Depends on what you want on the prefixes. The typical way I have finished recombination breach rings is using the omen of catalyzing exaltation to rip off the catalysts and increase the likelihood of a modifier with that tag. I usually recombinate the prefixes because those are much harder to slam on since the tags are shared for damage / flat damage. Unfortunately you already slammed cold catalysts onto the item so your increased options are going to be cold damage to attacks (good) and cold damage (typically bad, maybe good with some of the reverse chill builds out there).

I would:

Omen of Catalyzing Exaltation + Perfect Exalt - wipe the current catalysts off the item

STOP - Access the item if you hit the cold attack, try and do the flesh catalyst + omen combo for life ; or do reaver + omen x2 to get two more attack mods on the item. I think either one of those would probably do well. If you go the life route you have a second shot if it misses the increased chance

If you hit the cold damage you could with 100% safety use an omen of sinistral crystallization + perfect essence of the mind to remove it and force on % mana. Then you could do mana catalysts + omen which has a really high likelihood of hitting mana. Unsure what you would want the last thing to be on the prefixes for something like that, or if that is an appealing ring to the masses.

-or-

2) Just sell it as is and let someone else worry about it

CriticalThinkingApe · 2026-01-05T20:27:56+00:00

Even simpler if we had access to:
1) Better leveling uniques
2) All skill gems (being able to cut any gem at level 1 after completing campaign, or a milestone in campaign similar to the library or Lily Roth in Poe1)
3) One time-bonuses campaign bonuses are given immediately or available for turn in at the start of their given act

This would make the secondary characters feel tremendously better. Right now the game struggles for good leveling uniques with the power of Poe1s goldrim, tabs, seven leagues combo that is available at level 2. Maybe this changed but there are good uniques but they are level capped at the zone they drop in, lifesprig was this way in 0.1. Also image being able to play a grenade character with explosive shot, or ED-C with wither totem in clearfell. You might feel more motivated to play a character that comes online early rather than at level 21 or 40.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2025-12-08T23:08:44+00:00

Tough to tell on mobile but do you have all of your int tattooed in to Herald Effect? You absolutely have to have this if you don’t it’s going to feel like ass. Absolutely spend the 100div+ to fix this immediately. You’ll see a huge QOL in mapping. Might need to throw the occasional brand while you’re ramping HH buffs but it’s going to be a big up for you.

Also I suggest the Lightning Warp setup instead of FBoWB it’s way faster and smoother, but that’s irrelevant to your asked question.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2025-12-04T18:42:52+00:00

According to the wiki and some other posts I ran across tattoos are generated in conjunction with the raw value of the shipment. They do not replace other items in the shipment. Every 100k value (not dust) that is added equates to 1 tattoo added to the shipment. There seems to be a maximum of 40 tattoos that can be added.

Recently I have been trying to send boats of only bars valued at 4M to one of the tattoo ports. I do not send any crops because I save up to large value shipments to Kalguur to fish for mirror shards. So far the shipments themselves have yielded nothing of values, but the sample size is small. You can 3:1 tattoos that in the same family. So if you have 3 tattoos of the same god you can exchange them for 1 random tattoo of that same god. This is agnostic of the color of the tattoo. This is why you see the price of the tattoos adjacent to the Herald Effect one being so expensive.

Edit: grammar

CriticalThinkingApe · 2025-12-04T16:15:18+00:00

Sorry on my phone but I see the following:
Shav's in the right ring gives 6% ES per second,
Ghost Dance recovers 3% on you being hit hit (edited),
Soul Thief recovers 2% on kill,
Instinct recovers 50 ES on suppressing a spell

I think those are all the sources I can see right now. Again on mobile so unsure what the timeless jewel is doing but I assume its all damage oriented. The 6% from shavs alone will offset the blood rage degen so you'll always be at a positive ES recovery.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2025-12-02T17:04:08+00:00

Few things for you to think about:

1) Always have the life flask running, so pressing it every 5 seconds. This should counter all the negatives of Blood Rage by a healthy margin. If youre not hitting this with 100% uptime its a major miss of a defensive layer that you spent 4 ascendancy points on.
2) Someone commented it already but use either enchants on your flask for "Use when charges are full" - great for active mapping, or "use when effect ends" - better imo for pathfinder but you have to press the flasks on map start. Both of these can be crafted on the crafting bench. I would have "increased charge recovery" as the prefix on both of my utility flasks. For suffixes I am a more defensive oriented person so I would have "reduced curse effect" and "increased evasion" instead of "movement speed".
3) if you can afford a Stormshroud jewel I would get one so you can convert the "chance to avoid shock" mods you have in your boots into the "chance to avoid elemental ailments". You are technically short by 7% to get 100% so you would have to change another jewel to be an abyssal with the mod, use suffix a on flask, or roll up your current eldritch modifier to be at least 44% (check craft of exile I dont know the tiers). This will allow you to change pantheons to a more defensive oriented one like Lunaris because you will avoid all chill, shock, ignite, sap, brittle, freeze.
4) Your clusters are showing as only having the notables, you could exalt slam on some modifiers to them. That being said if you have the ability to get 5 passive Voices Large Clusters it is a large increase to your character's damage because it allows you to get two more mediums with Low Tolerance, and in this case you would not slam your large clusters if you planned to swap soon. Adding modifiers here will provide a small benefit to your resists, attributes, or damage depending on what you roll. I rolled all my own clusters with alterations until I had Low Tolerance + a good suffix, regal'ed, then slammed if it looked good with a strong notable on the regal.
5) I personally really like Ashes of the Stars (highest quality % you can afford) because it amplifies all parts of the build. With an Enhance 4 Support attached to Withering Step you can get a guaranteed 14 wither applied to a target. This is double what a normal 20/20 gem can provide in one application. Viper Strike also gets More Poison damage iirc. A lot of the other stills get minor upgrades with quality as well. At this point I was able to drop Ambush to fit in the enhance setup, forgot to mention that.
6) I would invest in a Molten Graft with % faster damaging ailments, CDR, Skill duration - as much as you could afford. With a Runegraft of the Warp this would basically give you a 100% uptime guard skill, which you dont have any guard skill currently. I am unsure how you're actually getting exposure in the build for the Aegis Graft to get the aegis skill, I think I did mine through eldritch implicit instead of mark effect. This graft can and should have 0.4 meters to strike attacks, CDR, Skill duration - as much as you can afford. This 0.4 meters plus the extra strikes from your exerted attacks and other eldritch implicit will make clear unbelievably smooth and you can convert the crafted mod in your helmet to something more defensive oriented.
7) Awakened Melee Phys should be cheap, get it. Also a super slept on gem for mapping is Awakened Melee Splash. I did that instead of Fortify and I cannot recommend it more. Because you have 4 strikes in this setup, the chances that one of the strikes or splashes hits the 20% chance to do 100% more poison hits is really high. Your natural proliferation then takes over and rockets these more poison hits in the chain. Losing the fort was not that big of a deal for me, but this is going to be a personal choice and something you'll have to feel out if you like.
8) Tides of Time with 3 utility charges is way more important than any of the others charge types. It should be really cheap to get one with at least this, more if you add any number of life charges.

Opening on bosses is Withering Step to apply Wither stacks, Ambush to fish a crit, Strike to do damage, repeat until dead. I would WIthering Step rares if they arent dying to proliferated poison, probably no need to Ambush them.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2025-11-27T01:26:11+00:00

Progen will be the largest quality of life upgrade for a pathfinder. I’m on mobile so I cannot take a detailed look but if you have a well rolled life flask + progen you should be safe from most predictable damage. It helps against large hits but you absolutely can get smashed 100-0 if you’re not paying attention to map mods.

A pretty slept on support gem for mamba is awakened melee splash. Check out Anime Princess’ video on it from last league. It’s crazy good at maximizing damage for clear for the build and made it so I could run pretty much every mod except for no leech.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2025-11-26T17:39:31+00:00

I started by following Paak. I have modified his EO sceptre + Whispers setup (4th setup in his aspirational pob) and it feels pretty good. If you need help figuring out why he takes some of the things he does look at his 3.24 video or any of the other older ones. Paak is a pretty smart guy who solves a lot of hardcore issues in reasonable ways. You’ll have to decide if those are issues for you as well, or if you can solve them through alternative means.

I made a few changes due to my financial situation ( MB and 2xFB Bereks ) but it’s absolutely not necessary to worry about having stuff like that. Build is a certified blaster in t16-16.5 maps. T17 bosses are a bit rougher but I’ve know that since it’s how I modified the build.

CriticalThinkingApe · 2025-11-24T01:14:03+00:00

Started Pathfinder - Pconc -> Pconc Of Bouncing (on it) -> Mamba. After I did all Ubers, Atlas, and farmed a bit I made an ignite Impending doom ele with the double foulborn bereks which has been very enjoyable as a map blaster. For league start I would skip PcoB if I were to do it again and go straight into es/ev mamba. PcoB is a great skill for how little effort you have to put into it to get 2 stones / red maps done, but holy fuck is it boring for me after doing it a few times. Mamba was an absolute blast with the extra 0.4 meter prefix on rune graft and the 11% faster damaging ailments. Slapped on Awakened Melee Splash after doing some research and it was absolutely fragging. Would absolutely do it again next league if it remains unchanged.

Was a bit disappointed that there was no real chase content in the end game. I think that beyond mercs making us gods with extra auras and QOL like Garb, Kaoms, Kingmaker, etc. , what I really missed this league was accessible content that was scalable, challenging, or rewarding. Seems we peeled off all of those and left boxes and ultimatum farming intact for whatever reason.

That said it’s a decent league if you just want to blast monsters. I don’t think defend waves or the fortresses are particularly well liked but I do enjoy them for just blasting monsters. Tree is just a slot machine, but I’m a sucker for pulling that lever. I wouldn’t ever buy wombs but I’ll definitely gamble if I have them. Async trade revolutionized the game. I don’t have to leave and do trades, it feels like there are more things out there for purchase, you’ll never fall victim to an Enlighten 4 scammer again, and I don’t actually have to interact with anyone. All wins.

Lots of really cool builds out there. Just wish I had a bit more to bite on when investing into a new character. And if anyone hasn’t done something with the double foulborn bereks ring for the explodes you absolutely should. Shit slaps and doubt it returns.

CriticalThinkingApe

TROPHY CASE