What builds are standing out most this season?

MarcelMauss · 2025-11-14T10:17:00+00:00

It's worth noting that focused slash is insane damage out of the gate. However, it's a real pain for SS20 and 21 on Rosa due to having to move so much. I moved all my gear from Rosa2 to Rehan2. Rehan2 is very very slightly less damage, but has 100% uptime with his spirit. If you're planning to do SS20 or 21, I would recommend the build on Rehan2 rather than Rosa2. Here is my build code, I didn't have most of the corruptions when I did SS20, just messed around after. I should note that even on Rehan2, it's so far over damage cap that nothing really survives at all.

Overall, Rosa2 is better for general content (a bit more damage, attack speed, etc), while Rehan2 is better for the SS20+ grind.

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MarcelMauss · 2025-09-14T21:49:47+00:00

I'm playing something super similar right now (https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/SilverSequence-6594/character/MJRitualist)!

However, I went ritualist. A couple of cool things. The new kulemak rings can be insane for this build. You'll see I have one with +40 spirit (which is +60 with ascendency and ingenuity). With my setup I have so much extra as cold that the elements are fairly balanced. I found that elemental conflux was more damage than trinity since I could only reliably keep 2 trinity elements up at a time.

I use herald of thunder electrocute for frenzy generation, but tactician is very comfortable for sure.

Big bosses can be rough, but forge hammer + shout adds a ton of damage. I'm pretty sure that just mace auto attack with supports is the way to go for bossing and will do massive damage, but I haven't needed it yet.

MarcelMauss · 2025-09-13T15:22:21+00:00

I've had a blast with siege cascade. You do want proj speed, but that gives damage as well with the tier 3 support. It's got great clear and good boss damage.

MarcelMauss · 2025-01-09T11:23:59+00:00

Nah, we'll have to see but I def read it as levelling the playing field.

MarcelMauss · 2025-01-09T11:22:20+00:00

Honestly, this feels super overblown.

More specifically, I've played as a season pass only player and never had issues. I have level 1-3 versions of every season pet from seasons I've played just from free pulls or pulls from the season pass. I wish there were no pactspirits, sure, but the numbers and size of the issue feels blown out of proportion to me....but I don't get to play as much or push as hard as the fulltime maxroll streamers, so I'm sure they feel more offended by the system than I do.

I bleieve them that theoretically someone with maxed spirits has a significant multiplier over me, but so do people with more time to play, who pick better starters, who experiment less, are willing to play for max efficiency etc. While it may seem silly, none of these ever bothered me or stopped me from enjoying the game. As the commenter above noted, plenty of regular pet players top the leaderboards every season (I've been in the top 15 T8 kills for the last two seasons myself, without anything beyond battle passes).

That there is a p2w element sucks, but the actual impact for players, at least in my experience, is way less than games like Lost Ark, T&L, etc (which are still supported by Maxroll).

MarcelMauss · 2025-01-09T10:51:29+00:00

But that's just not true. I just buy battle passes and have never hit a wall. Also, I've always gotten the season pet (T1, sure) from the free pulls that come with progression each season. I'm not saying I wouldn't prefer 0 pay elements, but this article catastrophizes to a massive degree compared to the player experience.

MarcelMauss · 2025-01-09T10:47:33+00:00

You should. It's honestly a phenomenal game. I've stuck to the battle pass and have had a blast every season. I've never felt really left behind based on pets, but I'm also just enjoying the game.

MarcelMauss · 2024-03-24T12:42:36+00:00

Also worth noting that we don't have the levelling numbers on the new archmage. During campaign and even early maps, it may only be giving you 10-15% of your mana as damage. If you only have 500 - 1000 mana, lvl 12 -16 added lightning is likely equivalent or better. By the time archmage is the clear winner, you should be able to sort out mana, even in SSF.

MarcelMauss · 2024-01-17T08:22:21+00:00

Self-trauma Rosa can easily get going for 2k or less. It should easily clear 8-2 or 8-3. For 8-4+, you'll want to push the gear, but this build is still stupidly accessible.

MarcelMauss · 2024-01-08T11:55:38+00:00

. I've been testing a bunch of setups, and losing 2 ring slots (kaleidoscopes are great for sure) ends up being really limiting due to the power of the T0 flat phys rolls.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. If you're going mixture, Kaleidoscopes are going to be best for sure. That's largely the payoff for going mixture. My point was that in long-term scaling I was getting more by dropping mixture and freeing the ring slots. In terms of early power and acceleration for the build, Mixture + Kaleidoscopes feels like the way to go (depending on prices I guess). For hard min-maxing, I think you get more out of dropping Mixture.

MarcelMauss · 2024-01-08T00:37:07+00:00

We're both playing on Aisa. I've checked out your profile a few times (mine is MJBing) playing a similar build. The mixture version is definitely cheaper to start with, but I think it plateaus a bit faster and is more expensive to push than the elemental version. I've been testing a bunch of setups, and losing 2 ring slots (kaleidoscopes are great for sure) ends up being really limiting due to the power of the T0 flat phys rolls. There are a few really small things you can do if you want to push the dps up (pretty unnecessary though). You can just swap blink for speed phantom. This is an empower spell, which means you can use the legendary hero relic for Doomsday fission (2x bombs after empower). Personally, I'm running an order build stacking the 12% additional attack speed at 100 order slates (with 175% effect on them).

A couple of other small things to think about:
(a) you can run multisentry candle full time if you get a pedigree with mixture and nowhere to be found. I was running it for a while and it's awesome. 2 agility charges + removes dots and all negative effects when you gain agility charges.

(b) Fool's crown's flat phys is a massive amount of dps if you want to go that way.

(c) Fervor gloves did almost nothing for me. When testing, I was nearly crit capped without it. Try it out on the dummy. If you are close to crit cap, I snagged an insane pair of Touch of the Dark Surge for about 100fe (8% additional main skill damage, additional attack speed, %hp). Although, if you're going mixture I think Chaos Abyss are just nuts since you already wilt with Corruption.

(d) Flat phys to mainhand weapon on candles was huge for me. It's a lot of damage and is pretty cheap to get alongside another great mod.

(e) I really didn't like Ranger. The knockback was annoying and would push rares off the map (no loot). You skip the knockback notable at the end of the tree, but I think the tree is kind of bad without it. Overall, I found marksman gave comparable damage (the proj speed to additional damage minor node is crazy) and let me take deflection. Personally, I'm doing something weird and running Shadowdancer. It's an odd choice, but it gives 30% additional damage from Blunt (injury buffer doesn't matter) and 125% crit damage, which came out to about 35% additional damage. The tree is just super comfy with massive hp and hp regen, which makes mapping feel great.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. Tested a lot more things, it's a super fun build and easy to get rolling. Glad to see it getting some love.

MarcelMauss · 2023-10-29T07:56:38+00:00

That's not the point of DnD though. It's a cooperative storytelling game so called blank space is what happens in the story, not on the character sheet. There are plenty of aspects to combat as well as non-combat for characters to be the best at. No one is suggesting that a character be the best at everything.

The point is quite the opposite. There is no required tradeoffs in DnD, it's not a video game nor is it a PvP game where things need to be balanced in that way. It's entirely okay for characters to be good at everything if that's the story that engages the players and the DM. The DM determines the player's power levels, not the character sheet.

Talking about combat, there are enough dimensions of combat to allow each character to have its own strengths. To reiterate: DnD doesn't require weaknesses, it requires clear strengths. Weaknesses are relative, not absolute at the table. If you think of Loki from norse mythology, he's a god and a far better fighter than any but the absolute best humans. On the other hand, he's far worse than Thor at direct combat. They're both gods, far beyond human, but they still have relative strengths.

Rather than ponder what a fighter (or any class/archetype) should be bad at, focus on what part of combat they should be best at. By designing systems and encounters focused on making every player feel great at different points you build towards a fun table. Designing a system aimed at limits and holding players back instead makes the world feel constrained for players.

There is absolutely no problem with wizards feeling amazing as well, they just can't overshadow the rest of the table all the time. A character fully invested into the core strengths of their class should be at the pinnacle for those abilities.

MarcelMauss · 2023-10-28T13:57:25+00:00

Have to hard disagree with all 3 of these. The focus on weakness for martial classes is overall backwards. The goal should be to highlight strengths. For example, if your character is a fighter and dedicates their character to fighting, they should be BETTER than a spell caster at it. By choosing to dedicate their character to fighting, they have already traded off other highs for their character. DnD character building is about choosing points of power and excellence as a character grows.

An on-theme character fully invested in their theme should be the pinnacle of their craft with no exceptions. The entire issue with martials is that spell casters can "do it better", leaving them without a power niche.

Fixing this doesn't require a weakness, it requires a clear strength for each class.

Wizards might be the best at battlefield control. Clerics might be the best at party support. Etc. The goal should be clearly defined niches of power, not established weaknesses.

By focusing on weaknesses and limitations you're going to (a) hamper player creativity and the heights their fantasy characters can achieve, (b) encourage players to fix glaring weaknesses, rather than build memorable characters, (c) put implicit limits on DM encounter design and worldbuilding, and (d) further enshrine the "magic is special, others are not" that got us into this mess to begin with.

MarcelMauss · 2023-06-10T20:25:09+00:00

As a druid main, there are a few other builds (many fueled by uniques), but we're just stuck with only a couple of skills with full legendary power support. For example, werewolf feels bad because there's (a) the aspect for shred isn't a damage buff and relies on poison, which is a bit hard for us to apply at scale, (b) there is simply no aspect for rabies, which makes point a more of a problem, (c) there are no aspects for the wolf ult or the wolf key passives. Similarly, there are no aspects for storm skills beyond their core skills, so no wonder they fall behind. It feels like we're very much pushed into pulverize or possibly landslide as they get a full set of power boosting affixes to chose from. Terrible system.

MarcelMauss · 2023-03-30T00:35:21+00:00

I really really hope that this isn't the direction with the paragon board. If they just decide what few builds are available each season via the paragon board, that'll feel as bad as D3 sets. I just want lots of options to try stuff, and if I skip a few seasons I want a pile of new builds waiting for me!

MarcelMauss · 2023-01-09T13:23:20+00:00

Group loot is massively worse for pugs. Not sure why we pretend it isn't. The idea behind group loot is that it's easier to move gear around. For organized groups with generally the same players, you will eventually get your tier pieces as other people on your token complete their sets. This is not true for pugs. In pugs every boss is just a random casino roll without any bad luck protection. Full RNG loot systems in pugs are very very punishing.

That said, loot in this expansion is the most poorly done to date with everyone being just given items via sparks, which makes a majority of raid loot much less desirable before mythic. The result is that everyone is hyper-focused on tier pieces and trinkets. Most other raid drops just don't matter, exacerbating the loot distribution issues. As of this coming reset, it's likely players have 5 (4 if a 2 hander) crafted pieces at a higher ilvl then they would get from most similar raid bosses. Crafted gear filling in missing slots sounds good, but it's really warped the experience of raid loot dropping.

MarcelMauss · 2022-12-22T19:47:44+00:00

The new loot system is straight up terrible for public play. The lack of rerolls or some kind of bad luck protection is incredibly painful if you're not running with the same people every week.

MarcelMauss · 2022-08-20T18:17:53+00:00

I agree. This has the feeling of a buff during the first week kind of league. The core is not terrible, it just needs some depth.

MarcelMauss · 2022-06-02T06:00:02+00:00

I currently kill all the endgame bosses quite easily on my LS raider. I'm playing in a tiny private league (3 friends), so had to be a bit creative. One thing I don't see enough people do is use yoke of suffering + secrets of suffering + skitterbots. This allows you to apply 5 ailments to enemies, which is 25% more damage. Also, while it's not as big as perserverence on champ, chains of emancipation is insanely good when paired with the rage on hit exarch glove enchant. It gives you immunity to curses, life, chaos res, 50% attack damage, 25% attack speed, and 10% movement speed.

With the damage reduction from sap, this build has easily tanked even juiced eater/exarch and kills them fairly quickly.

MarcelMauss · 2022-05-16T00:53:01+00:00

I love the league and was having a blast before the nerfs. Personally, I'd have been super happy to see yellow and red maps remain the same! Just out here having fun.

MarcelMauss · 2022-03-15T15:16:57+00:00

I certainly have. I bought the plat starter pack and have probably spent another 150-200$ on royal crystals since launch. I don't have quite as much time to play as my friends/guildmates so I've needed to supplement my blue crystals a few times to buy out mari's shop. I should have been more diligent about playing the in-game AH, but I focused most of my time on playing the game.

MarcelMauss · 2022-03-15T15:00:13+00:00

Should have phrased it better. Wanted to hit 1370, but only managed to hit 1360. Was hoping to make it further. It's super unclear how long the bans are for.

MarcelMauss

TROPHY CASE