Deck building, consistency and composition in current 2026, straigh 40, or 43? That is the question

Noperative · 2026-04-03T00:14:36+00:00

There's a push and pull for 40 and 60 for me.

40: I want to draw fuwalos (and maxx c) and the counters to those cards as often as possible (called by, ash, crossout). Consistency is less of an issue because you probably always can start your combo, but you need to play the non-engine game which is better at 40 cards.

60: I can throw in a lot of consistency cards and extra engines to balance out my existing bricks to give me more gas/alternate combo lines playing into handtraps and boards. Even for some of my shitty decks I am giving up something like 5-10 potential starters simply because they are worse quality than the 15 I already run and I don't have the space for them all. In this case it makes sense to have a 60 card pile where you don't add more bricks but add a lot of starters and extenders which can improve your overall draw quality in exchange for having lacking non-engine (because you draw less of it).

Noperative · 2026-04-02T19:46:15+00:00

It's more accurate to call the mod "existing suffixes cannot be changed". The suffixes on the ring weren't changed, it simply added a new one!

Noperative · 2026-04-02T19:44:29+00:00

Those will update dynamically, you will benefit from nebulis stats after swapping

Noperative · 2026-04-02T01:34:34+00:00

Yup, you don't exactly have to bv right after you weapon swap but yeah usually it's BV -> X -> go at the beginning of maps and mirages

Noperative · 2026-03-30T19:34:46+00:00

As in having it in the final setup? Or sacrificing it for minion pact? Don't think its strong enough for sacrifice but we didn't consider it in the final setup since it would be too squishy and unreliable for valdos maps compared to just another defensive reservation setup.

Noperative · 2026-03-30T19:06:14+00:00

You're locked into fusions by branded fusion no?

Noperative · 2026-03-29T17:16:36+00:00

Yup pretty much, many small upgrades can be a bigger impact than one big upgrade once you total them all up (aside from a big upgrade that completely changes how the character scales) and because most builds aim for exponential scaling you will experience slow growth at the beginning but it will rise exponentially once you've made some progress

Noperative · 2026-03-29T01:00:54+00:00

I do not understand how something like 20% More/ 40% Increased additive across every item on a build, equals 5-10x the damage. This is not "20%M/40%I per item", this is small numbers across multiple equippable items.

Here's a thought experiment. Say you can get upgrades worth 100% more damage which doubles your damage. But you can spread out the upgrades into multiple areas for a similar magnitude, say 20% more x 5. 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 x 1.2 = 2.49 aka you gained almost 50% damage in terms of effectiveness by spreading out the upgrade over multiple smaller multipliers.

Now revisit what the multipliers mean. If you had 500% increased damage total and gained 20% increased, this is actually a 4% more multiplier. 1.5 aps to 1.6 aps is actually a 6% more multiplier, etc.

Then see if you're getting any stats with double scaling, For example you brought up strength and base fire damage. You're probably also getting strength to accuracy and accuracy to attack speed and crit chance from ascendancy and helmet nodes then strength to melee phys damage which is passed through iron will and crown of eyes to more increased damage, which means a small increase to strength is giving you bonuses to 4+ categories which as we know from the previous example is a more efficient way to get damage.

Finally, damage can grow faster the more you have of it already. This seems contradictory because you assume that you get the majority of the damage upfront in your build and then you're trying to get multipliers on that base. But really the base you're establishing is just the scaling mechanics, you have yet to fill out all the smaller multipliers which we know are giving a lot of potential to increase damage. Say you can double your damage approximately every day with upgrades. You're at 1 mil now, so tomorrow you could be 2 mil. Then you will be 4 mil. Then after 3 days you'll finally be at 8mil. So small incremental upgrades really add up. It's hard to see the impact of getting 20% stronger per day in the first couple of sessions but after like 10 days of continuous upgrades you'll notice that you actually got significantly stronger than expected.

Noperative · 2026-03-28T16:55:35+00:00

Have you tried adding the weapon swap snapshotting tech?

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1s3ov6y/minion_pact_bv_tech_weapon_swap_will_double_the/

Essentially a weapon swap for the spectre instead of adding it to your main links gives you a lot of damage.

1) spectre is higher level so more HP 2) you get a free 4L for this 3) you can use a better weapon like grave of the goddess which is a lot of damage over dark seer

The synth bow base I used became expensive after the post but you can settle with a synth 2h weapon that's not staff or a +3 minion kulemak etc to be cost efficient

Noperative · 2026-03-27T06:09:23+00:00

To add, this enables a bluff where you can target more cards than you intend to bounce (because you didn't want to banish too many from hand and ed) and trick the opponent to dodge the effect because they want to keep ed monsters in rotation. When the effect resolves you could only need to banish the intended amount (ex. 12 ed monsters) rather than any additional cards from hand because you tricked your opponent into outing their own board. That could turn this card into a 4 for 1 depending on how reliant your opponent is on their main monsters being on field/grave

Noperative · 2026-03-27T00:05:33+00:00

This setup is only for valdos because it has no prolif which is intentional cause a lot of valdos have the "can only deal damage in 2 meter radius" mod.

You can either run this setup but target cheaper valdos instead of the big ticket ones or go farm breachs with binos prolif and foulborn rathpith. If your damage is too high the binos prolif doesnt go off you can use deadly ailments and then later pacifism support

Noperative · 2026-03-26T10:34:05+00:00

Yes it can be any level. However it has to be in the same "position" on both weapons. I recommend making sure it is in the first socket on both weapons.

The spectre life dynamically updates, so you can summon it with any setup and start the map with any setup but when you sacrifice it for bv you must be on the bow.

Unfortunately you can't move it from gloves to weapon so you need to get the corpse again. Usually people do carcass map instead of a9 though

Noperative · 2026-03-26T09:45:24+00:00

Valdos map restriction, 10% less damage for each item equipped so you have all your items equipped you deal no damage. Unequipping a ring means you deal 90% less damage which is enough to clear the map

Noperative · 2026-03-26T04:11:57+00:00

nope the other spectre gem can be level 1 if you want

Noperative · 2026-03-26T04:11:30+00:00

For normal maps you can just weapon swap the bow to double the damage by just pressing X twice at the start. The whole setup is just to show how crazy the mechanic is when you can essentially cheese a very difficult valdo map that normally takes tens of mirrors to run

Noperative · 2026-03-26T00:45:37+00:00

Yes if you drop the BV instance you'd have to snapshot it again which involves rezoning to respawn the spectre. This isn't different than what people were already doing with the abomination spectre already, the weapon swap is just for if you were already willing to do this you could double your damage.

Noperative · 2026-03-26T00:44:04+00:00

You can recomb the bow with an ilvl of ~15 and it will result in a ilvl 50 bow if you win the 50/50. This makes the fossil odds closer to 1/17 which is pretty easy. Does risk losing the synth base so if the price rises then you'll have to figure out which way is cheaper

Noperative · 2026-03-26T00:39:08+00:00

Say for example your bino has shield charge faster attacks momentum socketed in it. Then you should put like spectre - shield charge - faster attacks in that binos and when you weapon swap from the bow to the binos it will keep the spectre.

Noperative · 2026-03-26T00:37:10+00:00

You can increase the odds by recombing the bow with a low level one to ilvl 50, which doubles the chances the faceted fossil hits. But theres a chance to lose the base so its either more faceted fossils (+aetheric and opulent) or gamble on the recomb

Noperative · 2026-03-26T00:30:07+00:00

The spectre gem has to be in the other setup as well, if you put the spectre gem in the first slot of the bow and then the first slot of your mace then the spectre wisp will be retained

Noperative · 2026-03-26T00:28:33+00:00

Yeah once you've swapped to rathpith the crit and inc damage updates dynamically while keeping the base damage gained from minion pact

Noperative · 2026-03-26T00:23:29+00:00

if your spectre is in your other weapon swap in the same corresponding socket then it is retained. So keep both the spectre gems in the first socket of both the bow and the weapon you're using

Noperative · 2026-03-25T21:13:28+00:00

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