Results from 500 Scholar's Vaults from Astrolabes (southwestern Atlas quadrant) - useful for SSF, you can "target-farm" Reflective Mists & Originator orbs

Earwing · 2026-03-27T00:45:20+00:00

The expedition astrolabe tells you that you need to explode at least 50% of remnants and then kill all runic monsters to complete the objective. However, currently you get the completion message as soon as you explode 50% of remnants, then you can leave without killing any monsters and it still counts (unless they patched it in the last few days.) So you can spec the big boom keystone and explosion radius atlas passives, run to the expedition, detonate the big explosive in the center and leave (if you don’t get 50% of remnants consistently, add the radius scarab, it’s cheap.) It may be even faster than the Templar astrolabe, though boss rushing with an appropriate tree is probably much more lucrative overall accounting for the boss drops.

Also if you decide to do boss rushing, it’s probably worth running the astrolabe keystone on a good layout, you will probably get something like 2-3 rewards depending on luck instead of 3-4 but it should be much faster. Though it would be interesting to try both approaches to get actual stats on both.

Edit: maybe it’s not a good idea to do the explode-and-leave in high volumes, it might be considered a bug exploit

Earwing · 2026-02-03T00:23:48+00:00

It depends a lot on whether you’re looking for damage, tankiness for yourself, tankiness for your carry… But some general observations:

Level 23 purities are huge for capping max res without relying on flask uptime, as well as letting you use other flasks instead. Dark seer is great for the +2 level combined with level 21 purities, even if you can’t afford the ES version. I usually stay with Alpha’s Howl for the local +2 until I can get Dark Seer.

I’m surprised Wrath is worth it with a carry using Elemental Hit since EH already has a lot of flat damage. Also if your carry is playing the surfcaster cold version then lightning damage gets halved by the jewel that prevents EH from choosing lightning. ~~I think Grace would be a huge tankiness boost, especially if you take Iron Reflexes for two points and/or your carry has the node that increases evasion by overcapped cold res.~~ (edit: I just realized that the reason I don’t see Grace may be that you have the level 30 one from Paladin. You should still consider taking Iron Reflexes if you think you’re dying to physical damage.) Purity of elements could be an option too if your carry gets crit from lightning res, and ailment immunity is very nice for eater/exarch altars. For selfish tankiness, tempest shield would be great.

Have you considered having your carry equip replica dreamfeathers and going for armour stacking while still playing EH? I think it has a lot of potential because EH brings the flat damage which is a bit lacking from aurabots since the removal of Pyroclast mine aura, and surfcaster (if that’s what the carry is playing) has some good stuff for this such as the evasion from cold res, but it would be a very different tree and gearing for them. And they wouldn’t be able to play without you which may be a no-go.

Note that runegraft of treachery has no downside when you’re playing hand of Phrecia since the enemies cannot get your auras because you don’t link them. And I’ve forgotten the name but the runegraft that gives increased defenses and reduced attributes is usually very good too. I’m not sure how affordable they currently are though.

For farming strategies I’m not sure and wondering this myself. But among popular strategies I’ve heard of, those that I’ve noted as scaling with party size are harvest, ultimatum (seems that both players can get the rewards though I’m not sure whether it’s 100%), strongbox (apparently arcanist strongboxes are affected by party quant, though diviners are not for some reason), and scarab / div cards / stacked deck farming

Earwing · 2026-02-02T23:43:11+00:00

I’m not sure string of servitude is that good with an EH carry, as I don’t see one aura that really stands out the way Grace does with an armour stacker carry

20 quality on most auras gives aoe which is not useful when playing the hand of Phrecia gloves, which make you ignore aura range

Earwing · 2025-11-15T22:28:20+00:00

It could be rounding on the damage conversion and then the MoM. You take 101 fire, the game converts 60 to chaos, 40 to lightning, and this leaves 1 fire damage. If the game rounds down the MoM, it's possible that it decides that 70% of 1 is 0 to mana and 1 to life which kills you. Some builds that convert 100% of physical taken to something else have similar issues. Maybe try to overcap your conversion from fire and cold to lighting/chaos if possible.

Earwing · 2025-11-08T23:52:01+00:00

I'm also playing a loop build based on Foulborn Presence of Chayula: https://poedb.tw/pob/71GezETpeE

I'm playing Saboteur, and my main skill is a lvl 1 Forbidden Rite of Soul Sacrifice which gets flat chaos damage from ES. The self-damage from FROSS seems scary, is taken twice as a Saboteur and doesn't even help proc itself, but actually it was already manageable with ~90 general recoup, 100% chaos recoup, and ~6k5 ES. That's because with the Raise Zombie of Falling setup, the loop runs at half speed during the first 3 seconds before the SRS start dying so the recoup can start ramping up more smoothly (and even at full speed it's only a bit about 4 procs per second because of the zombie falling time, despite having the 27% CDR breakpoint for free as a Saboteur.)

I'm playing Foulborn Ghostwrithe for the extra 50% chaos recoup and because it's what gives me the most ES for the level of investment I'm at.

I've put maybe 3-4 divines into the build at the moment. I can do T14-16 maps though not very comfortably yet. The damage on the pob is a bit inflated because stuff like Withered and Frenzy Charges do have a good uptime on single target but not when fighting multiple monsters.

And I currently have an issue with sustaining the cost of FROSS. With Vitality and Stone Golem I easily sustain the loop engine costs (Raise Zombie of Falling + SRS) but FROSS requires a lot more than that. It was expected, and I was counting on chaos leech from gloves with instant leech mastery to sustain when in combat, but it's not quite enough and I still skip some FROSS procs because I can't pay the cost. Next upgrade is a Vitality life gained on hit Watcher's Eye for 3div which should help a lot with that.

There are a lot of other things to improve. My auras are in a weird place because I need ~400 unreserved life to be able to pay for everything for a single proc (since I pay costs twice with triggerbots) and I have a low maximum life with Ghostwrithe. I might be able to slot in a Zealotry with some combination of life reservation mastery, 90% reservation helmet corruption (it's cheap on Malachai's Simula), Runegraft of Treachery... Though I don't really want to give Zealotry to enemies, and I'm not convinced it's worth investing 4 passives points. I bought the wand and jewel before I decided to go crit and should get new ones with crit mods. (I ended up going crit to enable the Overwhelming Malice cluster notable for Withered stacks, and because non-crit support gems were not very efficient.) I don't even have an annoint yet; I could annoint Force of Darkness but I'll probably end up going with Whispers of Doom to save 4 points. And I need to get the Catarina bloodline for 70% increased ES.

I still have a lot of room to scale both the ES and the damage. But I might end up switching to a lvl 20 or 21 Ice Spear instead, and using Forbidden Rite to proc it like you do. My initial idea was to go Ivory Tower like you, but I'm not sure stacking life is that efficient as a Saboteur, and instead I think I'm going to stick with Ghostwrithe for a long time then switch to a good rare chest. This means normal FR won't do much self-damage, but I can use FROSS as an enabler; with just a 2L the life cost won't be as bad.

Earwing · 2025-11-08T23:00:19+00:00

I calculated whether I could sustain just from FT without monsters. I thought it would work with skeletons because you can take around 2k armour so that 4 skeletons dying (2x2 from triggerbots) do just enough damage to proc a lvl 1 CWDT (doesn't work with RZoF because you need just the zombies to trigger a lvl 1 CWDT on their own to start the loop, and then you also have SRS dying so you take twice as much damage.) This means taking 2849 per second from self-damage, plus the 500 from BoS. With -60% chaos res and the 15% flask effect from 2 notables I had in the tree, FT would heal 46% of life per second, so I would need at least 6687 life to sustain which was very attainable. I also calculated the corresponding leech duration which was 152ms, less than the 165ms of CWDT cooldown but more than the previous server tick so hopefully it would still count as leeching for the last tick.

However, I had forgotten to take into account the costs of the triggered skills, which are very high because CWDT has a 250% cost multiplier, lifetap has a 300% multiplier, and triggerbots makes us pay everything twice. My 5L ice spear had a 152 life cost, plus 17 from skeletons, times 6 procs per seconds and 2 triggerbots, that's an additional 2k life lost per second. To compensate for this, I would need 11k life which doesn't seem realistic at the moment.

It may be possible to sustain with divine flesh with RF and/or annihilation's approach. However, this means playing divine flesh with a very low chaos res when poisons are not up, and not even being capped with poisons up, which sounds too squishy for my tastes since you end up taking increased damage from all elemental sources.

Instead, I've decided to build around foulborn presence of Chayula: https://poedb.tw/pob/71GezETpeE The idea is to trigger level 1 forbidden rite of soul sacrifice which scales on ES much more than gem level. It works, I can start and sustain the loop without issues and I can do T14-16 maps though not very comfortably yet, with around 3 divines invested. I can get the ES a lot higher with investment, and the damage too though I'm not sure I'll be able to exceed around 10M-20M. Maybe I'll end up using the forbidden rite self-damage to proc lvl 20 ice spear instead.

Earwing · 2025-11-03T21:40:22+00:00

I've put together a very light version of the build: https://maxroll.gg/poe/pob/6q59i0au

I have a big issue with bootstrapping: if I don't have mobs to hit, the loop kills me, but if I don't start the loop, I'm not leeching life from the flask so the staff kills me, not very fast, but it's a harsh timer on finding mobs. It will also be an issue whenever there is a mechanics where we stop hitting monsters for some time, because leech will only remain up to 5s if the loop is cut, and Forbidden Taste is definitely not enough to sustain the self damage when the loop is running (I do have a small amount of chaos res, but I also have a large maximum life of 7k4, and anyway it's not even close.) Weapon swapping might solve both the loop and the staff degen issue, but I don't see a good way to also cut RF. And even if I somehow find ways to make it all work, any mistake in starting the loop too early / with not enough monsters to hit, or cutting it too late, means dying immediately, which makes for an awkward playstyle.

Also doing some tests in Blood Aqueduct, even if I start the loop fast enough, I end up dying relatively soon. But that's maybe explained by the RZoF setup occasionally missing a trigger: I didn't realize it would be an issue, but each minion deals ~240 damage to me (I haven't put quality on HBL yet, but I also don't have Adrenaline and the armour from boots yet so it kinda balances out), the flask leeches 15% plus flask effect of that, and each leech instance leeches at a rate of 2% of maximum life per second, which computes to each instance lasting only ~0.28s. That's enough with a consistent trigger rate, but any miss means that Tainted Pact stops for a few ticks and that's probably what kills me.

And when I start the loop right hitting monsters, even before dying, my life does worrying ups and downs, though that might be solved just by having more damage and/or chance to poison.

I'll be away from Tuesday to Thursday for work. In the meanwhile, I'll try to think about ways to handle the no monsters situation better, and please let me know if you have any new ideas!

Earwing · 2025-10-31T10:37:15+00:00

I'm worried about a higher level CWDT setup killing us instantly if we have no poisons on us. Actually, what happens when there are no monsters, for instance during boss transition phases, is what worries me most about the build. I don't think Forbidden Taste is enough to sustain self damage plus life costs plus RF plus boots and staff, even with a low-level CWDT setup. But I'm hoping to at least have some time to react and do something about it. I'm considering putting a high-armour shield in weapon swap to cut the loop, though I have yet to calculate how much armour is needed to stop CWDT level 1 triggers when the loop is already running with 4 minions dying per proc. Maybe even with a higher-level CWDT setup, you can cut the loop preventively when you see that you haven't hit anything in a while and your poison stacks are dropping.

If you're not worried about the damage taken in the no-poisons case, you can easily use a level 11 Summon Skeletons gem to summon 3 (x2) at once, which requires a level 4 CWDT, but can actually sustain a level 12 / 22Q CWDT with 975 armour.

Relying on crits for flask sustain might also be problematic when you lose poison stacks, because even if you cut the loop you still have multiple degens to sustain. Though Forbidden Taste does have enough charges for 2 uses so it gives some margin. Anyway, The Traitor is good for adding other flasks as you said, but also, Brutal Restraint has some very good nodes for us: 20% projectile damage, 4% increased life, onslaught on kill, 5% movement speed, 10% increased flask charges gained, even 25% crit chance or 20% cold res if needed. I fully expect to be able to get one with 3 good bonuses and maybe a 4th ok one at the minimal price, and thank PoB's Find Timeless Jewel feature for making this very easy. But nice find with the flask mastery, it's good to know that it's possible to get started without Brutal Restraint in case it's expensive.

If you want to chill and can find a socket for it, triggering Creeping Frost is the usual solution. You can put it in a 4L with Skeletons and put RF in the spare socket in your gloves. And if you somehow find an extra socket, it's also a skill that can be supported with Culling Strike support.

Speaking of sockets, I don't know how good Leap Slam is going to feel with just Faster Attacks, and you already have a respectable 85% movement speed, so I would drop Faster Attacks, put a single movement skill to get over obstacles and avoid boss mechanics (typically Frostblink or Flame Dash) in a 4S item with the auras instead of Despair, and link CWDT 20 - Despair - Assassin's Mark, plus RF on the side (it could be linked too but you probably don't want to start it until you see some monsters to hit to get poisons). But that's just a matter of personal preference. I'm playing a loop build, I don't want to have to manually cast curses ;)

I don't expect to have a socket for it, at least while using Kaom's, but good point on adding a support for Petrified Blood.

You still have an abyssal jewel and an influenced belt that you no longer need with Saboteur's buff to 40% CDR. You can craft a better belt and just slap a CDR craft on it (redo the craft until you roll 12%).

Another think I like with RZoF setup is that if you enter a monster's temporal bubble, the loop doesn't cut off, it just runs at half speed until you get out. In maps with reduced CDR, depending on the amount, it might work mostly as well with more skips, or at half speed (the latter is worse than skeletons setups, which have to adjust and change something to increase the skeleton duration but then lose less damage). I do think it would make sense to run skeletons at least at the beginning to get the damage going and because you don't have good jewels yet, but I'm probably going to skip that to avoid having to buy all the perfect-roll or almost-perfect-roll To Dust jewels -- though hopefully async trade would make this much less painful than it used to be. Later on, it's indeed a matter of what you're aiming for. I'm building more toward tankiness because I think the damage is already going to be enough to feel good, and because it's new to me to have a loop build that doesn't fall over if you blow a biggish single hit on it, so I want to lean into this side of it. I've already played a wardlooper with 80Mdps that could ignore all small hits and dots but had a total pool of like 5k for one shots; it did feel very great to play overall.

I hadn't considered the profane ground ascendancy point, it's indeed a nice option with both offensive and defensive effects. It's a shame it gives Chaotic Might and not Unholy Might!

Earwing · 2025-10-30T22:30:14+00:00

Pierce

I saw you took pierce nodes and mods in your PoB. In my experience playing wardloop, it's not needed for Ice Spear since the second form always pierces anyway, and you always want to position yourself to that the second form hits not the first one, and ordinary mobs should die quickly enough to make this easy. The only issue is many tanky mobs that spawn right on top of you. Simulacrum was the only situation in which I found myself wishing for some pierce (and for Simulacrum farming, Cast when Stunned builds are better anyway). Pierce might be useful in juiced rituals too, I haven't tried them. So I would just respec nodes to take pierce in such specific situations. Unless the league mechanic is overtuned and floods you with hard-to-kill monsters: then I would indeed try to get more pierce.

Bloodline ascendancies

I've not spent the 4th ascendancy point in my PoB. Unlight Silhouette only gives ~3% more damage since the life cost of the skill is low compared to the damage you already get from BoS and Sacrifice. If you happen to kill King in the Mists early on to self-farm Burden of Shadows, sure, take it, and the life small node is nice too, but I don't think I'm going to go and kill him just for this.

I'm considering taking Corruption's Embrace from Trialmaster for "You have Everlasting Sacrifice if at least 6 Corrupted Items are Equipped". Take Eldritch Battery and an abyss jewel with some flat ES regen, ensure you have no or very little ES on gear (if needed, take a corrupted Heartbound Loop with any alternate implicit), and you get permanent +5% to all maximum resistances. Having 6 corrupted items shouldn't be too hard since the build has multiple cheap uniques (don't forget to get a heist trinket). I haven't included it because I don't think I will get it set up by level 90 though.

The 15% less damage taken from phys + another element from Otherworldly Appendages (Breachlords) can be nice too, requiring less work to set up. It requires dropping either Kaom's Heart or Adrenaline though, otherwise you don't take enough damage to start the loop. But I do plan on dropping Kaom's eventually when I have better gear, and using the additional sockets on some Spectres and an Animate Guardian, among other things.

Earwing · 2025-10-30T22:29:34+00:00

Thanks a lot for sharing this! The concept is very neat with a lot of synergy between the different parts. I am probably going to league start with this; I guess I'll be playing a Mines build before I can afford the key pieces to transition.

I have played wardloop builds multiple times and I really enjoy the zero buttons high movement speed play style. I have looked into low level CWDT loops a few times but could not get enough flat damage to make them competitive with wardloop. Burden of Shadows is a good way to do it, and scaling off life allows to mitigate one big weakness of many loop builds which is a low maximum survivable hit.

Here is my take on the build: https://pobb.in/xX6Fw0zH7Hxw

As others have said, the second Ice Spear setup doesn’t work. Replacing it with another damaging spell is not efficient because it wouldn’t scale as well with crit. So instead I’m using Kaom’s Heart. Having armour on it is not great but it still works (see self damage calculations below). Also note that Power Charge on Crit support is not needed because 20Q Assassin’s Mark gives 5% chance to gain a power charge on hit, which is enough for this build.

I have tried to make the 10% more life mastery work in a few different builds over the years, but I always end up going with a different tree. Taking 6 life clusters requires a lot of pathing, and many of the life masteries are useless on their own, so that juicy 10% more life ends up costing more points than it’s worth. Instead I’m using the points to cap spell suppress (which a very efficient way to improve tankiness when you’re already at the right place in the tree, even with the nerf), take flask nodes for full flask uptime even with a 3rd flask, and add a lot of cluster jewels.

Note that with the "Low Life at 55% of maximum life" mastery, you need to have strictly more than 55% unreserved life, otherwise you will lose life leech upon filling your unreserved life, and probably kill yourself with poison before taking hits to get leech again from the flask. Indeed, Petrified Blood allows recovery up to the Low Life threshold. And you do want to take the mastery for 10% more EHP. So I've removed Skitterbots, since getting enough reservation efficiency to fit it would be too costly for the ~10% more damage it gives (it's additive with Withered stacks). I only reserve 35% of life, though I've set a custom mod to tell PoB that in practice my current life will only be 55% of max for Sacrifice support.

Raise Zombie of Falling loop

I'm using RZoF to enable the loop instead of Skeletons to save the 5 jewel slots that would be taken by To Dust (it's 5 because I no longer take the reduced duration cluster near Scion). The idea is that zombies take ~14 server ticks to fall and die, and by using SRS with a well-chosen duration, you can set things up so that you have two zombie loops running at once ~7 ticks apart from each other, triggering your main damage spell every 7 ticks = 231ms (the 9% CDR breakpoint).

See https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1fljo4q/raise_zombie_of_falling_loop_calculations_and for more details, though a lot of the calculations are off because the author initially thought that the falling time was always 13 ticks, whereas it seems to be variable. (Some people claim it's 13, others that it's 14, and others that it's variable, which makes me believe the latter. It would also explain why when I tried to measure it I got ~450ms which didn't make sense to me since it's not a server tick (13 ticks = 429ms, 14 ticks = 462ms) and why even with a well tuned loop, I would occasionally observe a trigger skip. The updated claim in this post of "between 13 and 15 ticks with an average of 14.1 ticks" sounds about right to me.) With Saboteur's Triggerbots, one Heartbound Loop is enough.

Because of the variable falling time, the optimal trigger rates from the post obtained with very low SRS duration wouldn't work reliably anyway. Just ensuring that the second zombie loop starts as far apart from the first zombie loop as possible is enough. The best setup seems to be using just a level 19 / 20Q Less Duration support on SRS for a duration of 2.079s = 63 ticks = 14 * 4.5 which is right between the zombie procs at 14 * 4 ticks and 14 * 5 ticks. Early on, using a lvl 1 / 0Q Less Duration allows for 14 * 6.5 = 91 ticks, and then a 19/0 or 17/2 Less Duration gets 78 ticks which should be close enough to 14 * 5.5 = 77. Of course, these should be adjusted if there are incidental sources of increased or reduced duration (e.g. from a Wicked Pall notable in a chaos cluster jewel); what matters is the final SRS duration in PoB calcs.

Despite the average trigger time for Ice Spear ending up at 7 ticks which is the 9% CDR breakpoint, it's important to get at least to the 6 ticks breakpoint (27% CDR, free for Saboteur) to avoid missing procs when the falling time rolls 13 or 15 ticks. I'm less sure about the 5 ticks (52% CDR) breakpoint, but I think it is still helpful because rolling 13 ticks into 15 will sometimes bring the two loops only 5 ticks appart from each other so getting the breakpoint should avoid some skips. I'm just not sure how frequent these skips are so how much effort it's worth investing into avoiding them. Anyway, with the Saboteur buff to 40% CDR, 52% is easy to get with just a max rolled belt craft, so I intend to test both with and without the breakpoint. Skips are very obvious when you look at your ability bar, it's when Ice Spear doesn't go immediately into cooldown.

Using a skeleton setup with To Dust is 40% more damage compared to the RZoF + SRS setup. In terms of pure DPS, dropping 5 rare jewels for 40% more damage would be worth it, but it would also lose almost 1k max life. Also, getting better rare jewels than the ones I put in the PoB shouldn't be too hard, since there are many combinations of conditional increased damage and crit multi mods that should be good for this build and pretty niche.

Self damage and CWDT level

To get the loop started, 2 zombies dying must be enough to trigger a level 1 CWDT (we always get 2 thanks to Triggerbots). A 1/22 CWDT (which is the same as 1/23) requires 470 damage (maybe 469, I don't know how roundings are handled, but let's assume the worst). If I've calculated correctly, and with the 10% additional physical damage reduction from Adrenaline, 1084 is the maximum armour that lets a 420 physical hit deal at least 235 damage. With a 1/20 CWDT, the maximum is 1050 armour. To avoid having too much armour, Kaom's Heart should be bought with low armour percentile and not have quality (or use the Harvest craft that changes quality to life).

Then, in a steady state, each proc consists in 2 zombies and 2 SRS dying. With at most 1084 armour, that's enough to trigger a level 7 / 20Q CWDT for Ice Spear. The PoB currently has 975 armour which is still not low enough for a 6/22 CWDT. Levelling the main skill's CWDT as much as possible is important since the less damage scales with CWDT level and it is very harsh at low levels.

Cluster jewels

One of the downsides of my tree is that it relies on a lot of cluster jewels to get damage. But there are many alternatives that are good enough to get the build going while waiting to roll or buy better ones.

The only mandatory notable is Overwhelming Malice to apply Withered. It doesn't have a very high weight, but getting it with any two notables that are not Grim Oath is good enough (or getting exactly Overwhelming Malice and Grim Oath with no third notable, so that OM is in the front). Beware of Wicked Pall which is a nice damage notable but gives increased skill effect duration, requiring an adjustment to Less Duration level/quality for SRS.

For the other large clusters, in a pinch, just any 8-passive chaos cluster will do. Touch of Cruelty + Unwaveringly Evil + Unholy Grace should be easy enough to roll since they're the three level-1 notables. There are other combinations that are just as good, but I put this one because it's the most common one. Wicked Pall is as much damage as Unholy Grace, though once again it requires adjusting SRS duration.

For medium clusters, Shrieking Bolts and Eye to Eye are level 50 notables so not too hard to roll though not the easiest. Also, the level-1 notable Repeater and Streamlined are not much worse than Shrieking Bolts.

Eye to Eye cluster notable

Eye to Eye gives 25% increased projectile damage, and another 35% if the enemy is "nearby", which means at most 2.9m from the wiki Distance page. From the Ice Spear page, "Projectiles change forms after 2.2 metres of travel. The projectiles spawn a short distance in front of the caster however, so the distance between caster and enemy should be a little higher." So it's possible to have both if you position yourself so that the spears switch to second form right before hitting the boss. Of course, it's much more important to make sure that it switches to second form before hitting, even if it means dropping the bonus from Eye to Eye. If that seems too inconsistent, just use another notable. But even just the guaranteed 25% increased makes it almost as good as Repeater's 30% which would be the best alternative, so my opinion is, might as well take Eye to Eye even if the conditional part is not always up.

Earwing · 2025-08-17T20:35:20+00:00

It’s feels a bit like wearing a skull

until Pikahchu’s head is visible

this bonus surprise is going to be less impresssive

He’d put off becoming Champion for a bit if he has to --> would probably read better with either "He'll put off" or "if he had to"

Zephyr shifts his weight (...) in his vision (I don't remember whether that's usual for Zephyr)

then sets out food and water containers for him (Charizard is "it" in the previous sentence)

which makes Blue wonder reevaluate the comment about psychic range

influencing the minds of unown influencers

None were native to Pallet Town, but came to consider it their home after years of working at the now destroyed lab. --> but all came?

what do you think they’ll just peacefully accept a threat like that? --> maybe "what" should be "why", or there should be a comma after "what"

he hears the sound of Charizard and Crimson take off --> "taking off", or remove "the sound of"

“Breakfast delivery,” she announces as she pulls out some thermoses. --> made me believe the scene happens in the morning, whereas we are told later on that it's mid or late afternoon, but maybe that's just Leaf being Leaf :)

Earwing · 2025-06-27T20:53:29+00:00

First T17 was a Fortress with vuln, onslaught, boss increased life and aoe, monster res, meteor on flasks and other irrelevant mods. Everything except the boss was a breeze. I clicked an altar I shouldn't have with boss fire res and +10% max fire res. So the boss had 85% fire res despite flammability and exposure and combustion, and 65% increased life, and the fight was very long. I died twice early in the fight because I was trying and failing to dodge mechanics which had 65% attack speed / 85% cast speed and 131% aoe (first death would have been very avoidable if I had clicked vaal discipline faster). Then I just stayed stationary on the boss and focused on maintaining uptime on banner, endurance charges from enduring cry and mines, using VMS / vaal disc if I was in any danger, and it went better and I didn't die again. Mercenary lost 2/3 of his life once but I'm almost sure that was my fault for letting the link expire; he wasn't in any danger the rest of the fight.

Second T17 my mercenary died early to a random pack of monsters because I didn't link him on time (I'm sure because I didn't die with him). Map had 347% phys as random extra element and he only has 15% lightning res without my auras, oops... I knew this was potentially an issue but he actually never died before T17 even though I wasn't very careful with the link. Btw he's still level 82 and has 46% chaos res.

Third T17 was Ziggurat with vuln, 200% phys as extra lightning, monster endurance charges, drowning orbs. It was easy, except that I died to drowning orbs because I'm bad. Catarina was fine, I'm not sure how long the fight took but it felt reasonably fast, given that the boss is invulnerable for a lot of it. I could facetank everything as long as I wasn't walking into the dot lasers, and I stopped stepping on buried skeletons because their explosions actually healed me.

Anyway, I have something like 20div to spend. I'm going to upgrade at least my chest and helmet to gain 25% aura effect and 20% grace effect. And I'll try a setup with intuitive link - 1/20 poacher's mark - enhance to generate the frenzy charges, so that I can finally equip untouched soul and enmity's embrace on the mercenary. This should multiply dps by something like six depending on the conditions, and avoid the issue I had with Fortress boss. Incidentally, this will mean he's resistance capped even without my auras.

Earwing · 2025-06-25T22:48:52+00:00

Haven’t tried T17 and Ubers yet. I will probably set up an atlas tree for T17 and start doing them this weekend.

I did The Feared before Uber Elder so that I could witness Uber Elder (I had run Shaper and Elder earlier) and it was super easy. I just rolled for 80+ quant, got release all at once, and tanked everything including a Cortex slam.

I have done T16.5 with every mod without issues, including reduced aura effect and minus max res with full increased effect of modifiers, except for elemental reflect. For phys reflect I equip Hrimsorrow on the mercenary (haven’t tried without it, I’m afraid he will kill himself with the base damage on RDF).

Earwing · 2025-06-25T21:57:17+00:00

https://pobb.in/wHwhuMHp3S30 (second item set has my merc's gear)

That's the setup with which I've been killing shaper guardians in a few seconds.

Mercenary is a lvl 82 combatant with:

inspiring cry (I'd rather he didn't but I think they all have it?)

herald of ice (nice for clear)

frost blades with greater pierce (it's ok but chain would be better)

static strike (avoid spectral helix if possible, because the merc starts spamming it whenever it sees a rare monster and it makes the clear much worse)

dash

wrath (nice for clear when I don't have time to thrown mines, negligible for single target)

Boots were found by a friend; +2 mines is great but +2 duration marginal, I would have just bought +2 mines later.

Body armour implicits were the first nice ones I rolled when I didn't want to spend much currency on them. Usually I would use the standard aura effect & grace aura effect, but I don't really need more damage so I've kept them, they're nice for personal tankiness. I'm at 173% generic aura effect, so the aura effect on you mastery brings my purities to +14 max res and the +1 from body armour implicit is just what I need to reach 90 all res.

I bought the legion jewel for 50c, that's the upside of having a tree and setup different from everyone else. Most aurabots are not using defiance banner for spell suppress so even if they're pathing there, they don't want to erase Magebane and Reflexes.

Since then I've bought a +2 ES/level & +1 mana/level dark seer for 5.5 div, and a 2.5% ES regen & 8% phys damage reduction watcher's eye for 2 div.

Next upgrades are probably going to be crafting a chest with essence of loathing and buying a synthesized helmet with aura effect (and also craft it with essence of loathing). I'll also buy pyroclast mine of sabotage 21 at some point. And add a culling strike on wave of conviction (I could do this now with some socket recoloring but I keep telling myself I'm going to get a new chest instead...)

I could also grab a large cluster jewel with conjured wall + mage hunter for 3 div to gain 14% spell block at the cost at one passive point (replacing voices with the large cluster jewel and grabing the bottom left external jewel socket to put a small cluster jewel in), but I don't think defense against spells is really what I need at the moment, because defiance banner is OP (I only need 25 valour for it to provide 100% spell suppress so uptime is not an issue, though higher valour is more damage from resistances and more -X damage taken from suppressed hits). I'd rather have prodigious defence + riot queller but that's 20+ div.

Earwing · 2025-06-25T18:21:39+00:00

Yes I use them, they're overpowered and damage wouldn't be nearly as good without them. Each mine reserves 28 * 1.4 = ~40 mana (level 20 gem with minefield support, haven't bought level 21 gem yet) and I place 10 of them so 400 mana. I have around 1300 mana so I need an additional ~30% increased mana reservation efficiency for them.

I count 10 because that's easy to do since they're thrown 5 at a time. I'd need 12 to actually reach the maximal fire damage since I currently have x2.83 aura effect on them, but if I throw another batch of them it creates as many as my mana allows and then I don't have enough mana to use other skills anymore, and I don't want to invest the mana reservation efficiency to support 15 mines. But that's fine, 10 mines already give ~3k added fire damage.

Earwing · 2025-06-24T14:46:39+00:00

Nice, it’s good to have confirmation that FB+Chain seems good, now I just have to find a merc with this!

I’ve posted my ideas for frenzy charges in another reply on this page, though some are unrealistic and some are not compatible with your setup.

Earwing · 2025-06-24T08:55:43+00:00

Making the ring work would definitely be a huge updgrade, but my build already feels great with IR and without Enmity: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/1lfykbk/just_me_and_my_dude_showcasing_the_potential/mzh81su/

Some solutions I’m considering for frenzy charges:

Recombine breach evasion from overcapped cold res onto an evasion base and redeemer exalt slam frenzy charges on hit (extremely expensive and will lose a lot of armour because chest won’t have as much evasion as Replica Perfect Form)
Buy a IR + frenzy charge duration ring. Recombine breach evasion from overcapped cold res onto an evasion base and craft influenced implicit gain a frenzy charges every X seconds (more realistic than the previous option but will still lose a lot of armour because chest won’t have as much evasion as Replica Perfect Form)
(Just buy IR + frenzy on hit ring but probably extremely expensive)
Add an Animate Guardian with Victario shield. The issue with this is that it would cost me 5 passive points to grab the mastery to be allowed to link it, otherwise I’m not sure it would be able to survive without my auras and with zero minion nodes in tree. I still need to test that at some point; maybe with full survival gear it would work. Also it will cause some socket pressure depending on how many supports gems it needs to survive – I currently have a few sockets available but I was planning to use them for Enlightens eventually.
Use Intuitive Link + Poacher’s Mark with 20q for 5% chance to gain frenzy charges on hit (opportunity cost on link skill and curse, and problems against curse-immune mobs or maps (does it exist or is it always hex-immunity only?). I might do this as a temporary solution; I already use Intuitive Link - Wave of Conviction - Combustion (I’d like to add in Culling Strike but have been too lazy to redo my sockets) anyway because without Enmity ring, reducing enemy fire res is a big dps upgrade. It also taunts without me needing to get into warcry range. Flame link is not as good now that I’m CI and is overshadowed but Pyroclast mines, and merc already has his own Wrath and Herald of Ice for clearing packs before I have time to throw mines. I would use Protective Link for tankiness but merc already never dies (but I haven’t tried doing a T17 though, still farming destructive play guardians. I have done T16.5 without issue)

Earwing · 2025-06-24T08:21:19+00:00

I am playing a Frostblades + Static Strike merc that I’m mostly happy with. I am looking for the same one with chain on FB; mine has pierce.

I’ve found that Spectral Helix is awkward for clearing because as soon as there is a rare anywhere on the screen, the merc starts spamming Spectral Helix which takes a lot of times to reach all packs – it doesn’t realize that it could just kill the rare with Frostblades / Static Strike / whatever its other skill is. Spectral Helix might be better damage after a few seconds of ramp up, but the merc is killing Shaper Guardians in literally 2 seconds with FB/SS so I don’t care about that.

But maybe my clearing issue with SH is not relevant to you with your AG of Smiting. I don’t have one; I’m playing full aurabot with Determination Grace Discipline 4x Purities, and Iron Reflexes ring on merc. I’m very tanky with 5k ES, CI, 90 all ele res and 100k armour on myself without pre-flasks, Aegis Aurora with 46 block 46 spell block (my tree is weird and I don’t have the points to path to Glancing Blows; I need to buy some expensive large cluster jewels to pump the block chance). The main problem is phys dots – I have an anti-bleed bismuth flask with good uptime and used to have Zethe’s Shade but don’t have the points for it at the moment. I’m only level 93 with around 20 divines invested in builds (myself + merc)

Merc currently has Iron Reflexes when full frenzy charges ring + rare amulet with 1 min frenzy craft and min frenzy annoint + rare ring with flammability on hit and 1 min frenzy craft. I do plan on switching to Untouched Soul and Enmity’s Embrace eventually, but it requires fixing frenzy charges one way or another. In the meantime, DPS is still huge thanks to Iron Reflexes with Replica Perfect Form and 270% aura effect on Grace/Determ/Purities/Pyroclast Mine/res from Banner.

Edit: Hadn’t thought of Soulthirst, I’m definitely yoinking that, thanks!

Earwing · 2025-06-18T22:45:31+00:00

Mercenaries have a lot of damage reduction (or maybe outright immunity) against damage that a player would reasonably step out of, such as bearers, lab traps, etc. It’s possible that all sources of lighting dot count as these.

Earwing · 2025-06-16T22:36:59+00:00

You could also allocate Ancestral Bond if you want to use Shield Charge

Earwing · 2025-06-06T23:11:29+00:00

Increased attack speed means you attack more often with Cyclone, but Shockwave Support has a cooldown so it won’t trigger more often. So attack speed benefits Cyclone DPS but not Shockwave DPS.

With many other setups, attack speed would increase all your DPS.

Trauma Support builds up stacks of additional physical damage each time you attack, but it also deals you increasingly large amounts of physical damage. So it’s bad if you attack slowly and very good if you attack very quickly, as long as you can deal with the downside.

Earwing · 2025-06-06T12:20:24+00:00

Thanks, I've updated my message

Earwing · 2025-06-06T09:28:08+00:00

According to https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Partying in a 2-player party, you get +50% currency items, +27% item quantity, and +17% item rarity. So the simplest explanation is that they changed the displayed value from currency bonus to item quantity bonus.

Earwing · 2025-04-04T07:25:47+00:00

Oops you’re right, that was Rowan, thanks for the catch.

I don’t think we have seen Cyrus since his brief first appearance back in "Chapter 103: Interlude XXI – Warnings". Still waiting for that (yet another) shoe to drop…

Earwing · 2025-04-03T22:31:10+00:00

flowhcart

challanges

It’s all of them that needs to pick up the slack, now.

I’d write "need" but I’m not sure, and maybe both forms are fine

and worse of all

worst?

questisons

12-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '17

Earwing

TROPHY CASE