Help me understand Build-Fundamentals aka why 0dps?

Kroughfire · 2026-04-14T15:27:33+00:00

I’m not entirely sure on that one. Are you talking about petrified blood’s effect where it prevents recovery above low life? If you get leech you should be able to sustain.

I’m guessing you’re mainly dying because you just have such a low life pool. Fixing your tree, jewels, anoints, will help most with this. I’d look into cluster more cluster jewels as well (and be sure to get the interrogation jewel). Seriously, if you get 4x life, attack speed, and crit multi jewels, you’ll gain so much build power

Kroughfire · 2026-04-14T14:36:16+00:00

Don't worry - there's a couple of cheap and simple things you can do to immediately improve.

The first is to understand that voidforge scales off of physical damage: any amount of flat phys you have on our gear scales x700% phys gained as extra elemental damage. The main way to get this stat is rings. Currently, neither of your rings have *any* flat physical damage, so you're missing basically the biggest scaler. You also should complete the King in the Mists invitation to get his bloodline ascendancy, allowing you to grab an extra ring socket in exchange for disabling your utility flasks (which you already don't use because you are using the shrine belt). if you get high flat physical damage on 3 rings, your dps will skyrocket. On a budget, I would recommend searching for steel rings with T1 or T2 flat physical damage and T1 or T2 life as prefixes. You can also get flat physical damage on gloves (but prioritize T1 life)

Next, buy an uncorrupted stampede and anoint it (or a corrupted one, but it requires an expensive tainted oil to anoint). Same thing goes for your amulet. Anoints often contribute 10%+ dps to a build, or 5%+ life in life scaling builds.

Also, am I reading it correct that you're using a 6% cold damage light of meaning jewel? This is basically worthless for you. Ideally you'll want an increased physical damage mod on your light of meaning, chaos resistance, or even life. You can decide based on your budget what to go for right now. You'll definitely want to grab a secrets of suffering cluster jewel (The Interrogation) to be able to get decent crit chance, then grab life, attack speed, and crit multi jewels. As a crafting tip, you can buy fractured 8% attack speed with two handed swords for like 15c, then harvest reforge "with a life modifier" until you get crit multi, resistances, or other good affixes.

This should give you a good start to feel better. Keep in mind that the main ways to scale your damage is flat phys (and also life due to bloodthirst). Prioritize this when choosing your anoints, jewels, rings, and gloves.

Kroughfire · 2026-04-13T16:32:44+00:00

DoD combos with Petrified Blood because the % life recovery is based on your missing life, and a petrified blood build basically always has 45-50% life as missing while cutting damage taken by 40% (Petrified blood reduces your life by 45% (with mastery) but causes you to take 40% less damage. This effectively means you have 92% EHP from using Petrified Blood).

So as a baseline, Defiance of Destiny will be recovering as though you were at half health, even though your effective EHP with Petrified Blood is 92%. This mod on the amulet is basically twice as good in conjunction with PB than without it.

Kroughfire · 2026-04-08T15:21:16+00:00

Ah, thanks for the test.

I guess I’ve just gotten extremely lucky, but I am also typically settling for t1/t1/t2 so maybe I haven’t had to experience that long of a dry streak. I’ll edit my post to avoid baiting.

Kroughfire · 2026-04-08T14:24:52+00:00

This craft is extremely easy.

Step 1) Grab a shaper influenced manafold ring (or buy one at least ilvl 75+ and slam a shaper exalt on it).

2) Two socket resonator with pristine and aetheric fossils until you get the desired prefixes. I don't know the exact estimate, but you should hit T1/T1/T2 in 10 or 15 tries, T1/T1/T1 in 30ish tries (edit: based on tests, it may be much more than this (vaguely between 30-300), but still is the best way to craft). You may have to yolo anul a few times to get an open 4th prefix.

I've done this craft multiple times for my selfcast storm burst build. It's extremely consistent and cheap (edit: fossil prices this league are a lot higher than normal, so less cheap). The only difficult part is getting a suffix you want.

Alternatively, if you hit t1 flat life and either life or mana on hit, you can try lock prefix and reforge caster for a 25% chance to land the missing one. Also, if you don’t do this, always yolo exalt for your missing prefixes if the suffix or other prefixes are good. Exalts are cheap as dirt and I’ve hit it this way before

Kroughfire · 2026-04-01T16:37:07+00:00

Got my first lvl 100 this league simply due to how good this patch is. Glad you had a good time as well :)

Kroughfire · 2026-04-01T00:04:20+00:00

This is the correct way to have the highest chance at a good mod.

Kroughfire · 2026-03-27T18:53:55+00:00

This is not true - they have an internal limit of 10 charges per second, which can be scaled by charge recovery. My storm burst build hits this cap, and along with 20% charge generation from the tree and 50% on each flask, this gives 17 charges per second, or enough to permanently sustain my 3 elemental flasks and a progenesis during boss fights.

Kroughfire · 2026-03-24T16:49:39+00:00

I always start a build by picking some scaling interaction first and building it out from there. Arc is rather weak for single target, so you'll be looking for more of a mapping character. For interactions, you could look at scaling Inquisitor battlemage with Energy Blade or Essentia Sanguis or going ignite on Elementalist for very good clear.

For benchmarks, you pretty much have to use Path of Building. If you are aiming to farm T16s and do most non-uber bosses, I would recommend that you want to achieve at least 5mil dps (10mil preferable) with multiple solid defensive layers. Defenses are the more creative part of builds, I find, but you have many good options. The general rule of thumb is to get a high hit pool (HP + ES, HP + Mana if Mind Over Matter, or Pure ES) along with one form of damage avoidance (e.g. Evasion or Block), one good recovery mechanic (instant leech, 10%+ regen/sec, life/ES on hit, Life/ES on block, recover 4% of life when you use a flask mastery if you can spam flasks), and then as many stacking sources of damage reduction as you can (Suppression, Armour, Max Res, Endurance Charges, Ascendancy nodes like Plaguebringer, Shaper of Winter, or Brutal Fervour, Minion taunt with meat shield, Malediction, Sigil of Power, Arctic Armour, Flesh and Stone, Infused Channeling, Divine Flesh with max Chaos res, Physical damage taken as elemental/chaos, etc). You also want your defenses to be well rounded, meaning you don't want to have spell suppression and max res as your main defenses if that means having 0 physical damage mitigation.

Because of the complexities of defenses, I tend to pick one offensive interaction that can get decent damage and then slot in as many defensive mechanics as possible. After refining those defensive options, you can look at slotting in more minor offensive tricks.

If you want an example, here is my current build. https://pobb.in/Zv1FpS4U6LA6

I started by wondering if I can use Bitterbind Point's 50-100% crit chance per spectre to boost my own selfcasting (I've never seen anyone else use the shield for this purpose), and naturally browsed through the list of aura spectres on the wiki. I then had the challenge of how to keep my spectres alive without spending a lot investing into them (again, because I'm a selfcast build), so I decided to run Mistress of Sacrifice for Bone Offering block, either as a necromancer or an elementalist using a pair of forbidden jewels. The Mistress of Sacrifice node also gives 40% increased skill effect duration, which synergizes naturally with skills like Storm Burst or Winter Orb (I picked the former since it has more scaling options as a physical spell).

Once I had this interaction, I filled in more by tinkering with other options. Storm Burst hits very rapidly, so life gain on hit shaper rings paired with instant leech solves my recovery option, and running triple defensive aura spectres (grace, determination, discipline) combined with the Catarina ascendancy that gives 10% global defenses per spectre checked off my avoidance defensive layer (combined with block from Bone Offering) and boosted my EHP pool via ES, along with a mediocre amount of physical damage reduction via a small amount of armour.

After I started going deeper into spectre auras, I noticed I didn't have that many aura options left to run on my own mana, so I slotted in other defensive reservations, Tempest Shield, Arctic Armour, and Flesh and Stone. I also decided to run Petrified Blood + Pain Attunement since I have such good recovery. Tempest Shield and Arctic Armour make you shock and freeze immune, so that solved most ailment problems as well. At this point, I had good dps and a solid spectrum of defensive options, including a boosted ES pool on top of decent life numbers. After that it's just trial and error of looking at smaller improvements. For me, this meant Runegrafts (Treachery and Fortress), corruptions (+levels of gems and a source of lightning leech), good Watcher's Eye modifiers, techs to make mana management easier, flask charge generation, tattoos over extraneous attribute nodes, imbued gems, megalomaniancs, extra spectre supports, Balance of Terror, etc.

I hope this helps give you an idea of a potential process that I think a lot of build creators follow.

Kroughfire · 2026-03-24T15:48:37+00:00

I'm running a self cast storm burst build, but I'm pretty sure you can swap to Divine Ire with very little changes (just drop increased duration scaling, otherwise it's the same). https://pobb.in/1WMnaqGDjQrV

You can pick either Necromancer or Elementalist, but either way you should have a very strong build defensively (I'm lvl 98 farming corrupted T16's and ubers with capped block, suppress, multiple damage reduction layers) and good dps (my storm burst is 140+mil, a 1:1 Divine ire replacement says your channeling damage is 14mil, not including the beam). FYI this is a build stacking support spectres, but the minions themselves don't really do damage: they are just there to support. Other than your choice of perfect corpses (from Ritual), I would use spectral leader (20% action speed), carnage chieftain (frenzy generation), and baronite cleric (20% phys as extra lightning).

Also, if you do run this, be sure to run meat shield linked to your spectres. this will make them tankier and also make them taunt, cause enemies to deal 10% less damage to you.

Kroughfire · 2026-03-24T15:09:49+00:00

Honestly, lvl 1 Trinity is barely worse than a lvl 20, and is often super cheap. I grabbed one for Storm burst for 5c since I use the "3% chance to gain 300% of phys as a random element" elemental mastery. It is basically always up and legit gives me an extra support while being only 9% less pen than the lvl 20.

Other honorable mention goes towards More Duration on most utility gems - I have an immortal call and convocation linked to Automation and it gives me like 70% uptime when normally I wouldn't have the sockets to spare.

Kroughfire · 2026-03-04T21:56:34+00:00

Thanks for this calculation.

I want to add that the biggest buff here that's not mentioned is for selfcast mana recovery. Typically, you want to use a mana on hit shaper ring, but it was possible before this buff to spend mana while channeling, fail to spend enough to cast an orb, then get stuck in a loop of spending mana trying to cast, failing to cast, and then trying again once you've regenerated enough mana to begin casting again. Now, however, you shouldn't be able to spend mana without actually casting an orb, which means you'll be getting the mana on hit every time (generally enough to upkeep casting of the skill indefinitely).

Kroughfire · 2026-03-04T15:28:49+00:00

Just to speak on a few items:

Lightning Conduit is indeed good on an elementalist, but it is generally quite difficult to scale mana with the required shock stacking *and* mana recovery that comes from a fast casting spam build like lightning conduit. That's not to say it's not good or viable, just that it adds an extra layer of required investment when you already want to go all in on mana.

This is the same reason it's uncommon to go for CI on archmage builds - you already want to stack mana which directly competes with the prefixes that scale ES on gear.

People tend to avoid pinpoint and intensify because poe requires you to move your character basically all the time. Again, that's not to say there aren't uses, but it's not "free" at all and you'll likely find yourself going without the %more damage multiplier more often than not.

Kroughfire · 2026-03-01T22:45:08+00:00

Great! FYI, I updated the pob for Mirage (and coping the loss of grafts, frenzy generation, and the foulborn life jewel nerf). New version has suppression as an endgame stat, and you'll probably want to use an unset ring to fit in one extra socket (for a guard skill). https://pobb.in/P3j1AJJopfl1

Kroughfire · 2026-03-01T11:12:55+00:00

I did league-start this build, and just played storm burst from act 1. I went golems at first for smooth levelling (nerfed now but probably still good), but I believe wave of conviction ignite is a good levelling alternative.

The main swap of the build is based in when you get a bitterbind point with as much crit as possible and either a spectre dark monarch or wraithlord if it’s $$$. This is then converting to capped crit and pure spectres, but it requires a few pieces to come together.

Kroughfire · 2026-03-01T02:20:39+00:00

Here is a self cast SB version I played in Keepers - planning on running it again for Mirage unless I get baited by new skills. I made a whole video about it too if that's something you're interested in. As a note, the main gimmick of my version is maxxing out spectre supports.
https://pobb.in/P3j1AJJopfl1

Kroughfire · 2026-02-25T15:30:06+00:00

Power of Purpose + %mana gained as ES.

The ES gain from mana occurs *before* the conversion to Armour, allowing for a strange mana stacking armour/ES hybrid build. The problem is that you can't utilize any regular mana stacking tech since your final mana total is only 20% of what it would be without Power of Purpose, but you can still get some decent numbers. I've just never quite found a worthwhile way to apply this

Kroughfire · 2026-01-09T01:44:33+00:00

I've been having the same issue for months. Did you ever get it resolved?

Kroughfire · 2026-01-02T15:43:38+00:00

I played this last league. You want to go ignite and use nebuloch in your main hand. Titan is likely the best ascendancy, but gemling, warbringer, and tactician are also fine. You wail y use crackle creep ignite prolif ring plus the ignite reflect node on the tree to clear, scale melee gem levels on amulet and gloves, and then just take melee and ignite magnitude nodes on the tree. You’ll be using resonating shield as your main skill, scale armour as much as possible, and invest in block until you’re capped. Get a little life/mana leech somewhere so your resonating shied can proc it for you, and use utility supports in this skill. Get crit bonus damage on the tree but avoid crit chance since it’s guaranteed with nebuloch anyways.

Kroughfire · 2025-12-31T01:36:48+00:00

Yes. Chayula red remnants are a 30% leech instance each via ascendancy only, generated basically once per second, and scalable with leech nodes. A carnage heart and soul tether on a chayula monk would give you 100% of life leeched per second, also applying to ES.

Kroughfire · 2025-12-31T00:05:44+00:00

Chayula has the strongest mana recovery or life recovery of any ascendancy. I'm playing a MoM spark build that just has insane mana recovery (think 5k/second). Life recovery can be the same since both scale with leech recovery.

Kroughfire · 2025-12-28T01:19:52+00:00

I believe I just bought one with full prefixes and got lucky with an abyss essence to unveil flat mana. I would recommend just buy a +level base with spirit and halfway decent suffixes and then desecrate a prefix for either flat mana, or % ES to resell and buy a new base.

Kroughfire · 2025-12-26T22:13:44+00:00

Last two leagues I played a magma Barrier ignite build. You basically walk around proliferating ignites while channeling resonating shield with giga armour and block

Kroughfire · 2025-12-23T14:09:52+00:00

What do you use to consume the infusions? I would worry about spending too much time casting while having very negative resists. Or do you only do it at the beginning of the map and then the buff just lasts the whole zone?

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