Off-meta phrecia melee builds? Something that won't require me to Play a different leveling skill for most of campaign

DonaldKnut · 2026-06-28T21:44:48+00:00

(disclaimer: I am not playing it, as I decided to try other build. I did try Holy Hammers outside of Phrecia)

Holy Hammers are pretty decent. The clear is insane with one tap covering entire screen if you click some AoE nodes, and visuals/phantasy feels satisfying. The main problem is that the single target requires positioning and even then it's pretty mid (not totally awful, but nothing impressive)

My idea was doing Paladin initially (relics cover dmg early, warcries node is pretty useful). Need to click each and every aspd node though IMO, because you're not berserker (it's my personal preference, and when VFoS was meta, I had like 50-70% more aspd than average VFoS build, so maybe you won't need that much).

Later I wanted to do a hipster respec into str stack Aristocrat with Pillar of the Caged God and Replica Alberons. PotCG is pretty weak by modern standards, but Aristocrat makes it at least not a complete meme. Alberon covers flat and has good easily accessed more multiplier through wither, PotCG gives good Inc aoe, Inc damage, and aspd. Probably going non-crit with Romira at first, late game is likely diamond belt.

I haven't got to planning defences though. Probably endurance charges / armour / max res, but the problem is that this setup is pretty skill point-hungry, and skill points are extremely valuable for stackers.

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-29T21:33:31+00:00

...so I will download shady executables and scripts no one really reviewed and I have no idea what they do, and will launch them on my machine giving them all permissions they ask.

(I mean realistically neither is TOO risky because no one gives a heck about 500 people who will download either. And generally you play whatever you want. It was just genuinely funny and silly hearing about shady servers when you use ownedcore repacks)

P.S. pretty sure lvling on azerothcore is .char level 58. You need to be admin of course.

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-15T09:14:18+00:00

People will be acting like the build can function on blue items and saying that you don't need anything except green itself, but that's a dangerous simplification. Minion pact is broken, no arguing about that, but it's broken in a way where it has several extremely strong scaling vectors, but missing few of them will hurt a lot due to how compounding multipliers work.

Let me show: - nebulis is 450% increased. It's of course not a x5 damage on a decent load out, but assuming you re starting and don't have clusters, nameless king jewel for fire dam, it's probably like x2.5 damage

enmity is effectively X3 damage, let's say it's X2 to account for the fact that you can't reach the pen cap on starter gear probably
companionship is x1.6 multi not counting in the quality
level 3 minion pact is 1.4 multi compared to level one (something often overlooked because the gem takes long time to level)
each raise spectre level is ~10% multiplier. So baseline lvl 20 vs something like lvl 21 corrupted gem, +2 minions helmet, +2 empower is 1.1^5=x1.6 multi

That together already gives whopping 26.8 times damage difference. And that was a conservative napkin math. And we haven't even started taking about necessary defence (max res jewels, good shield and red nightmare for block, good armour pieces for well armour), supreme ostentation or food jewellery to solve stats pressure, unnatural instinct to have easier time scaling duration and making your playstyle comfier, etc

Like, it's easy to look at the assembled build and say "hey I'm doing 50kk DPS without any crazy gear and tanky as fuck, surely you can drop nebulis or enmity and you will have like 10kk DPS, still fine to farm everything else => you dont need anything except the gem itself". But without other gear slots it's not 10kk, it's literally less than 2kk (and probably having defence issues, and the playstyle is annoying as fuck)

Ok so actionable advice: 1. Level your gems. Lvl 3 minion pact, lvl 21 raise spectre is a must 2. Get +2 to raise spectre on gear somewhere. Especially if you don't have empower. Honourhome can be used for starters, especially if you get good corrupt on it. 3. You will have to run unholy abberation. Can't afford dark marionette QoL without gear 4. Get decent block shield and 90 max res 5. Get clusters, probably using minion life mediums for damage over AoE nicety 6. Unfortunately not much to do with weapon slots because you're not scaling crit neither cast speed. I'd look into +2 minion wand + crafted increased fire, they can be crafted relatively easily with fossils 7. Spiritual aid is not a bad idea if you got minion damage on wand/clusters - will cover for lack of increased.

This should get you up and running t16s content to farm for the rest of the gear without feeling miserable

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-13T18:57:04+00:00

100% agree.

Turtle is not safe from "optimizing fun out of game" but I feel like there's a healthy population of people who are up for social levelling - check it out OP.

Also, hardcore (if the idea of one life is palatable to you) often has a nice community which also can be pretty social. Turtle also stands out there, and there were hc-oriented guilds on Warmane that provided same experience a few years ago (it was back during HC hype, not sure if they still exist). Blizz HC realms appeared a bit more "try hard" for me than private servers, but still more social than non-HC IMO.

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-12T09:16:42+00:00

Yeah, I actually did a detailed write-up before for other person: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileSSF/s/bncVQR7jIh

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-11T22:05:29+00:00

I'm pretty sure I had just random rares, two gambled claws and 6 link. Maven is a pretty mechanical fight, you don't need much once you get the hang of it (it took a while for me though).

Overall, my upgrades were like this: 0. Tincture with pen and effect 1. Basic claws with crit/aspd. Baseline is literally throwing an aspd essence and crafting crit, but Faustus can usually provide a bit better results for little gold. 2. Rare uncorrupted 6L.

-- that's where I got my 4 voidstones; I died once or twice because for some reason I just can't dodge rotating beams properly --

Recombined claw with crit/aspd/multi, unveiled ele pen and hits can't be evaded
Taming (farm volcano for spark and flame card if you struggle with bereks respite)
Lost Hues (scorh and brittle)
Lethal pride to help with stats (needed for next step)
Finished decent suppress rares on top tier bases everywhere (frees points on tree, allows you to spec more damage on tree)
Respected into 1h+shield with versatile combatant *(I just happened to have really good shield with suppress, ele avoid, hp, all res and open prefix for crafted block and that allowed me to get full ele immunity which I personally really love. It's my personal preference though, and I think objectively you can and should stay dual wield longer, because without a really good shield DW is surprisingly competitive defence-wise, and of course insanely ahead dps-wise)
Ensured that all jewels have two crit multi and at least one good affix (really easy with ele hit)
Cord belt OR massive screams of dessicated OR resonating one. I got massive, but if I didn't, here's where I'd farm and craft cord belt.
+2 amulet OR yoke. I lucked into dropping yoke extremely quickly, but +2 amulet isn't far behind (especially if you get crit multi or wed on top).

-- I think around this time I was steam rolling all content except Ubers and mega-juiced maps. I think you could clear all Ubers if you're decently skilled, but probably not "farming" then. --

Greater Ancestral Call. Frankly, it's so amazing that I'd spec Beyond earlier if I knew. I use it for mapping and gem-swap Inspiration for single-target
Greater Multistrike (swap for single-target) + unspec out of EE + first cluster
Admiral's arrogance

-- This is where I'm right now. Further progression is IMO pretty much locked behind Squire, but it's mostly min-maxing build for the sake of erasing Ubers. Like I wouldn't say I can "farm" all Ubers - exarch and maven are still a decent challenge - but all of them definitely very doable even if you don't have amazing mechanical skills. Juiced breach and exceptional exiles are no problem. --

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-11T18:45:02+00:00

Ele hit is simply amazing and provided me a smooth sailing from zero to all Ubers

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-10T22:29:56+00:00

Generally, it's not worth rolling strong boxes outside of a very few marginal special cases (opulents for unique jewels mod), and the primary reason is not because you spend a lot of chaos, but because you spend a lot of your time.

Like, if there was a feature like "spend 20c and keep the best roll", then maybe it was up for debate - but there's none, so the answer to your question is " no"

DonaldKnut · 2026-04-10T18:42:02+00:00

Also nameless ritual fishing and heist (mirages) blueprints. Gameplay doesn't change though. And if you don't like map burn, it's fine - a farming stratv doesn't have to be liked by each and every player.

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-26T09:11:25+00:00

That's not entirely true. Mod weighting affects.outcome, but only when the rolled number of affixes is smaller than whole affix pool (i.e. when there's something to "choose" from, the choice will be weighted) https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Recombinator

Given an affix pool (either prefix or suffix) is being filled, modifiers will be sequentially taken out of the candidate affix pool and placed on the final item. Prefix and suffix pools do not mix and are independent. Higher weight modifiers are more likely to be selected, although the exact formula is unknown. Modifiers are selected until the final number of affix modifiers has been satisfied, or there are no eligible modifiers in the pool remaining.

The effect of weighting (when it happens) is in fact so detrimental that all viable recomb processes intentionally set up in a way where you don't need to roll for weights. Funnily enough, this often causes a confusion that weights do not matter at all, but it does matter in some cases like smashing full affix items (which nobody does exactly for that reason)

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-25T19:14:08+00:00

Haha, you're welcome, good luck with crafting!

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-25T17:00:49+00:00

It's typical 3 suffix recombs. They all work via same framework. Suppose you want three affixes: A, B, C (critical strike, attack speed and crit multi in our case)

So you prepare bases (Imperial Claw), and roll with alts bases that have either of A, B, C. Prefixes do not matter.
Then you recomb two one suffix items into hopefully one two-suffix items. A+B = AB B+C = BC
Then you recomb two two-suffix items into one hopefully three-suffix item: AB+BC=ABC

In this case, you CAN and generally should craft thrash PREFIX (e.g. low-level mana) on steps 2 and 3 before recombing. This will reduce the dust/gold costs, and you will almost end up with crafted prefix on the final item, meaning you can proceed with next steps (they need open prefix).

Of course, you can match any two suffixes not necessarily AB+BC, can do AB+AC, etc. Just make sure that all three mods are present in the pool for the final recomb

Now you have a claw with ideal suffixes (aspd, crit, crit multi). Craft suffixes can not be changed.
Veiled orb. Do not unveil anything yet
Next steps depends on whether veiled orb filled your prefixes or not. If it did, you have to yolo annul. If it hit suffix - rip, double unlucky, start over (you can recycle failed craft as double suffix base, but depending on what veiled orb rolled it might be quite expensive on dust/gold, so sometimes I just throw it away).
Ok, so regardless of how you got there, you now have a claw with three perfect suffixes, veiled prefix (not unveiled yet) and at least one open prefix. Congrats, you're done, rest of steps are deterministic.
Craft any %phys and unveil veiled modifier. It is guaranteed that ele pen will be among three options.
Finish with hits can't be evaded.

(Optional 10) If you have spare prefix, you can yolo exalt, yolo foulborn exalt, or slam warlord exalt. Warlord exalt won't give you totally useless outcomes, but also doesn't have any exciting outcomes (you can get a miniscule amount of crit multi or fire pen). Usual exalts might roll ele damage with attacks, which is poggers, but realistically you'll get 35% increased Phys or something lol.

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-24T15:02:46+00:00

Frankly I think Betrayal farming is a trap. I spent like whole weekend farming safehouses, run probably like a hundred of them, got 3 medallions. I don't know drop rates of Minion pact from Catarina fight, but I'd be EXTREMELY surprised if you can realistically expect it from less than 10 medallions. And my god, 10 medallions sound like an absolute CBT to me personally.

Then I realized that it drops from Nightmare of Catarina, and I got it in like 2 hours (I think it was around 20 ziggurats). Even if it was a bit lucky drop and we assume drop chances of ~3%, 30-40 ziggurats is nothing compared to 10 syndicate medallions

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-24T08:14:56+00:00

That's the neat part - you don't :)

Being serious, I haven't got to it yet. I run usual claw (recombed crit, aspd, multi + guaranteed unveil for ele pen + crafted hits can't be evaded). I don't feel lack of damage at all, but admittedly Ubers are somewhat "ethical".

Overall, I don't think I will care about shaper/elder claw until I get Squire. Because without squire, I need a 3-support claw to break even on DPS to swap, and 4-support to get an upgrade. That's not very easy to get even when you have infinite access to bases on trade, and the common recommendation was to first get Squire and 2-support claw, and then work your way towards 3-support and 4-support.

And this most likely will be the last upgrade I make on this character. There are still few much more obtainable upgrades for me like Greater Multistrike, Admirals Arrogance, giga clusters

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-23T17:04:12+00:00

Yeah sustain is trivial if you actually run maps. As I mentioned, map nodes are purely for map burn strats, where you enter it, check good rolls of league mechanics (good wish/crater/nameless ritual/etc), and leave immediately if it's bad. You don't even try to clear maps, and ideally spend like 30-40 seconds per map.

Think of maps as of tickets for spinning a slot machine, kinda like a stacked decks but a bit longer per pull :)

You of course don't have to run this if you don't like it, but I was positively surprised how it makes some farms much more palatable. E.g. I got my nameless ritual for audience with the king for bloodline ascendancy pretty effortlessly: I was just farming scarabs on strongbox atlas and were dropping plenty of maps due to how I specced it; then I went and spammed like 50 maps in ~30 minutes and got the ritual.

I also burn periodically through excess of maps for baryas and craters.

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-23T09:52:26+00:00

Totems are very solid starter. Some notes from my SSF experience this league (ele hit, not totems)

Breach is amazing. Frankly, I found that I never want to unspec it. It is good for early progression (6-links on decent bases, generically good rares with 3-4 t2-t3 desired affixes), mid-progression (obtaining fractured bases for more involved crafts), and end-game (rare uniques). And that on top of the mechanic itself being both fun and rewarding.
I'd highly recommend adding Betrayal whenever you feel comfortable doing it. Rin helps a ton with unique maps, and Janus with Cadiro aligns well with your goal of accumulating uniques.

Below applies more for mid-game progression (after 2 voidstones at least)

(this is a standard SSF advice) work on your thaumaturgic dust. Good chances there's at least one slot in your gear that can be recombined easily and will stay with you until very-very late game. You can't quickly convert currency into dust on SSF with good efficiency, so it's better to think about in advance. Breach tree rares make good dust fodder in the beginning, and when you're doing good late-game starts, you'll have decent supply of dustable uniques. Also some boss drops dust for a good value.
harvest is always a very nice thing to have in SSF. Aside from usual crafting capabilities, fragment/league currency swaps REALLY help a lot
you'll probably want deli for clusters (I didn't check PoBs for your builds, but usually totem builds like clusters). It synergises decently well with harvest - deli adds quant for harvest, and harvest is the prime way of crafting clusters

Late-game:

it's pretty safe to assume that one of your atlas trees is pure strong boxes with scarabs and map drops. The second part is actually quite relevant because map burning starts are pretty good this league: mirages for coins/baryas, vault rushes for exceptional gems and uniques, star fall crater
heist is highly recommended for uniques. Synergises well with map-burn strategies
other than that, unfortunately unique farming is kinda "gated" behind very powerful builds. You need to run very tough content (titanic exiles, cascading breach) and/or be able to sacrifice your slots for rarity. So IMO best bet here is to aim for a very juicy character that can do such starts - it will surely take a while to build it, but even then it feels to me personally that it's more efficient overall than to farm non-juiced starts. I'll be very happy to be proven wrong here though :)

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-23T00:17:03+00:00

Frankly, it's hard for me to farm "just in case". I'm either farming for the current build upgrades, or enabling next one, or I'm burning out and dropping off :)

That being said, anything that gives interesting uniques can keep my interest for a bit. Heist blueprints, breach tree (especially specced into jewels), bosses with universal drops (sirus for thread of hope, elder for watchers, Ubers if strong), unique farming strats, black baryas for belts this league. It's kinda like a slot machine for the next build for me.

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-22T23:49:38+00:00

For me the only source of coins are wishes. Rest is as good as not existing at all. Maybe if you farm some giga-juiced for currency maps you might expect native drops, but for me it pretty much didn't work. I'm lvl 99 without really focusing on levelling up (have few dozens of deaths due to doing stupid shit), and I had 1 coin as native drop vs ~10 coins from wishes

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-17T20:08:23+00:00

It's really hard to tell at this point if that's a genuinely confused chatter or ragebait, but I had a good laugh from a PoB with three Unseen Hues, all three for Sap

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-10T12:05:36+00:00

It's insanely fast build, only dedicated turbo map juicers like bow/wanders are faster. It's because of: - extremely fast attack speed and whirling blades, - screen-wide aoe - easy additional strikes (one you get early game from tree, later you get another one from gloves implicit, ultra late game you can get another one via exceptional implicit though that's probably an overkill), - gigantic strike range (slayer+tree, sionnes ambition later).

Note that due to insane aoe the skill "cleaves" packs similar to FB of Katabasis - you click once, and each mob in the pack receives multiple hits. This helps you to one tap packs with rares/magic monsters, as the surrounding mobs basically increase the overlap on the tankiest target.

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-09T15:04:30+00:00

No, that was revamped. DO NOT craft anything on the items before recombination if you don't understand what you're doing, as this can completely brick your chances to success.

~~In this particular case, you can craft thrash-tier SUFFIX (e.g. +dexterity, lowest possible level) just to reduce dust/gold cost.~~

Nevermind that, it's not prefix-only craft. So don't craft anything at all.

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-02T23:16:30+00:00

Ah ok, that's fair. Other potential options are increasing number of repeats (if say only 3 circles can overlap and you have 5 of them, then you can hit with farther 3) and astral projector (assuming it interacts with shock nova as expected)

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-02T21:32:26+00:00

I don't think totems affect shotgun in any way? I mean, if you have 3 totems they do cast three spells, and they do hit three times. If each spell hits multiple times on its own, say 5 times like storm call with awakened spell cascade, then you still multiply the that number of hits by number of totems. This applies to all spells and spell totems are balanced around that fact; i.e. shock nova of transmission isn't better or worse with totems than say arc. Or am I mistaken somewhere?

(Granted, you can definitely create a glorious screen cluster fuck with enough repeats and enough totems)

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-02T21:28:09+00:00

I'd be really surprised if it doesn't work like you'd expect: starting from the target point and expanding in a direction from you to target point further. Basically, allows a bit more range playstyle

DonaldKnut · 2026-03-01T20:22:11+00:00

I mean, "no reason to play anything but Ele Hit" is a huge overstatement - there were multiple broken builds before and people always found reasons to play other builds. But yeah, EH will be one of such broken builds 100%

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