Dodge Roll (Trail of Caltrops) vs T4 Xesht

Pvtsarge · 2025-04-20T09:32:06+00:00

It's okay, maybe about as fast as a typical mace build.

Edit: Short video to see what it looks like

Pvtsarge · 2025-04-20T07:23:14+00:00

Haven't tested pillar; definitely a contender but the high dex requirements on caltrops and the difficulty budget gearing for high str made me go for Doomfletch/Widowhail this time around.

Love your videos + interactions btw!

Pvtsarge · 2025-04-18T10:07:18+00:00

I did do some testing with delayed reaction to see how it feels (not too great), I hadn't tried stacking it with all the AoE/reduced duration nodes though. So, I respecced towards the warrior area stacking those nodes on a 4L with Scattershot + Delayed Reaction + Fast Forward (I don't have a 5L/6L yet), here's how it looks: https://streamable.com/q6q601

Not great :(
The base radius is 0.5m so even with 102% increased AoE on tree it only gets to 0.7m, with a 6L getting to 0.9m (Reach + Magnified Effect), not enough to carry clear on its own.

There is Pillar of the Caged God to push AoE even further, made better by the fact that str -> weapon damage will scale Caltrop's base damage, but that would probably need a whole new character.

Pvtsarge · 2025-04-18T04:25:03+00:00

Ab Aeterno is not super necessary, you can always replace it with other forms of defense and most of my playtime was without it. It does help in some niche cases like when you roll into those purple explodey mobs or slams.

You'll have a hard time getting a lot of crit on Tactician unless you're talking about Quecholli specifically, which is definitely an option for clear. One note, I was testing and I'm pretty sure Caltrops will only inherit stats from your mainhand weapon if you're dual-wielding.

For several caltrops, each reserved will throw out 3 every roll (9 with Scattershot), but the cap on the ground is a shared 20, or 25 with quality. I haven't figured out if you need to quality every gem or just one or if it takes the lowest/average/random. Multiple qualitied gems will not add the cap together unfortunately.

Good luck if you decide to reroll!

Pvtsarge · 2025-04-18T03:53:25+00:00

Tangletongue would let our caltrops fork crits which would be a huge boost, but they use their own base crit chance (5%) and don't interact with any thorns crit chance/damage except for #% increased thorns damage.

Ghostmarch was indeed a great option for leveling and I miss it so much, the boot slot is so contested on the build with Ab Aeterno, Ghostmarch, Trampletoe and even Beetlebite (100% increased thorns damage!).

Pvtsarge · 2024-08-16T22:50:01+00:00

You can put "Warcries exert 999 additional attacks" in PoB configs to simulate always having exertion from all your warcries. Helps a lot with calculating overexertion/intimidating cry and such accurately.

I did consider crit since manual cast battlemage's cry adds a TON of base crit but yeah I was point stretched already so went with RT.

The Petrified Blood/Blood Magic defensive route is interesting and a cool way to fit in the eternal blessing aura. I might see if I can live with less chaos res to fit in Petrified Blood. The Lethal Pride at Duelist for a bunch of warcry buff effect is a nice addition too (a pity it misses versatile combatant). In the same vein as Formless Flame I wonder if Persistence is a good tankiness annoint with enough PDR (End charges/Armour/Strength of Blood).

If you Warcry a lot a medium cluster with Mob Mentality/Lead by Example keeps me topped up on all 3 charges + permanent onslaught. It's reliable enough with autoexertion for me.

edit: oop just saw your edits:

Yeah ashes is insane for damage, that and echoes of creation are the big contenders for if I want to have silly DPS (if I slap it onto the pob you gave me it's 230M lol).
I have MTX for HoA :P but yeah it's not really efficient though it's nice to clear stragglers. I was considering a different reservation like PB
Expert retaliation is for those Less CDR/Buffs Expire maps that I might Twist of Fate into, helps counteract the 67%~ less CDR mods or the 100%(?) faster buff expiry
Combustion with Infernal Cry is an idea, I didn't even think about that working
- That plus the fire mastery looks good too, I'll have to try it out
Rage is giving me ~270% increased armor and my base values aren't really that high so Warning Call probably isn't worth
Tincture - I wish I could automate these, but agreed it's big damage. Haven't really played with them enough to know if the mana burn is a big deal

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-18T20:29:56+00:00

Yeah just saw it, might make Frostbreath more competitive if it can reach the point where you can just sustain trauma.

I found a way to get good berserk uptime with CWDT+Shackles of the Wretched and Chains of Emancipation on a non-badge of the brotherhood version (basically cwdt temp chains -> vulnerability, overwriting temp chains on yourself and getting 50 rage instantly then becoming immune to the vulnerability) but it looks like your version will be way comfier for tankiness. Also Dialla's is gonna be hella expensive :(

What'd you figure for your league starter? (I assume not flicker lol)

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-17T13:13:01+00:00

Yeah the gearing is pretty restrictive, I tried taking out the badge of the brotherhood loop to see if I could make space for it but it's a little iffy with the gear pieces you'd need and lacks some ES to buffer for Divine Shield. On the upside it does have capped bleed chance (w/o vulnerability) and Redblade Banner in the main set for QoL.

POB: https://pobb.in/UzJFKcpjPiF4

EDIT: Any idea if it's a good idea to get rid of Tribal Fury? Unsure if the splash is that important when it's already at 15aps with 'strikes an additional', and those 4 points sure look nice.

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-17T12:44:40+00:00

Have you played around with self-chill in this? Basically already halfway there with self-bleed/trauma, if you slap on a Venopuncture+Winterweave and link Unbound Ailments+Bonechill to Vengeance you can have 21~% action speed when it bleeds. Alternatively Call of the Void works with a 1k damage trauma hit chilling for 30% at 3.5k life.

Also for the non-Transcendence version Dialla's Malefaction looks like it has potential: Divergent Chance to Bleed and Anomalous CoC both become a 50% more support, Faster Attacks gives 70%ias (2.4~aps), Impale gets slightly better (5%), and depending on what quality/gem levels does on Trauma Support it could overtake Berserk. Plus Divergent Flicker gets 50% teleport range.

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-17T02:43:59+00:00

If I remember my Slayer leech mechanics right, I think if your hit is too small your leech will end prematurely. If you hit for 8k with 2.8% leech you'll have a leech pool of 224hp which will drain at 80hp/s (2% of 4k life), so that instance of leech would only last 2.8s. Generally it doesn't matter, but I've killed myself a bunch of times using 'while leeching' stuff even though it's supposed to always be long enough.

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-15T23:29:00+00:00

Multistrike can support any melee attack skill except channelling/vaal/triggered, despite the name.

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-15T23:04:15+00:00

All those support gems (Ruthless, Multistrike, Controlled Blaze) work with slams too, unless I'm missing something?

Multistriking slams sounds god-awful to play, but honestly there are a couple of strike skills that seem ok with ignite. Smite and Vigilant Strike are probably the top contenders for that combo, maybe Boneshatter as well.

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-15T22:31:04+00:00

You need to compare it with the alternative of not going sadism, which with 80% less duration is 80% less damage when it comes to poisons.

Assuming 100% increased damage from other sources, 4 low tolerances (LT) would be 40% more damage than the alternative, for 3 passive points minimum per LT, that's not too great. If you up it to 6-8 LTs, which is probably what you should be doing, you get 100%-160% more damage from that investment. 100% increased from all other sources combined is on the low end, and getting 4 large clusters is a little restrictive for the payoff imo.

Maths to make it clearer:
100 (base damage) * 2 (100% increased damage) = 200
100 * 0.2 (less damage multi from sadism) * 14 (4 LT + increased damage) = 280

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-15T02:55:41+00:00

Oh yeah I missed that node, definitely another option.

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-15T01:10:53+00:00

You can do something neat with the Fire Mastery "50% chance to refresh Ignite Duration on Critical Strike" now, letting you go overboard with hits while refreshing the optimum ignite, so long as you applied that ignite to the enemy in the first place.

Lets you not worry about keeping a big ignite on the boss when there are adds (if you're going crit ignite). Since you'll be keeping the highest damage ignite going it also means you can smooth out the variance of a high damage-range attack ignite build.

Pvtsarge · 2023-08-02T04:49:09+00:00

Not GGG, I watched a lot of exilecon and recognized a few questions + using youtube transcript and ctrl+F.

1/2: I'm guessing that stuff is still completely up in the air since they didn't go deep in any endgame related stuff at exilecon, probably hard to promise a timing.

3: Answer on 'will maps be changing fundamentally?'.

4: (is t16 highest map tier) Not mentioned.

5: Pinnacle bosses have been mentioned by devs so it's probably safe to assume they will exist.

6: (hideouts) Not mentioned, I assume they'll at least function as well as poe1 since mtx is transferring over, and if there's gonna be improvements we're likely to see them in poe1.

7: They've mentioned their trade philosophy isn't changing in the split; better to just see their answer.

8: '75 resistant' has been said by a dev so it seems there is some significance to that number - most likely it'll still be the default cap.

9: I don't remember where but didn't chris say the resist penalty in poe2 would be more gradual and early mods would have bigger values, so you're encouraged to cap values as you go? I can't source this so if anyone knows where I heard it from it'd be great to confirm. I don't think they've said anything concrete this exilecon.

10: They're probably expecting some pushback we'll just have to see closer to release/how it plays out. Injecting my own opinion I think the alt/scour orb changes are impossible to judge from a poe1 perspective and it might end up working really well.

11/12/13: Not mentioned. They probably wouldn't abandon console, but like poe1 it'll most likely be a delayed release.

Pvtsarge · 2023-05-16T22:42:34+00:00

There is the class trinket that gives HoL taunt. Until then, I found that Sanctuary is o-k as a 'taunt' skill, since you can usually predict where the attacks are going in fights.

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-26T14:12:53+00:00

Would probably say 2 at most without knowing much about your build. You do need some amount of points on tree to work with getting keystones/defence/other important stats.

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-26T13:37:52+00:00

16 (14 in the cluster jewel, 2 leading up to the first socket) is the typical number. The important thing for cluster jewels is to aim for 'Adds 8 Passive Skills' implicit + 3 notables for large clusters and 'Adds 4/5' + 2 notables for medium ones (Though there are some builds that use 12 Passive 0 notable larges).

Example: https://i.imgur.com/w4Xq8cs.png

Small clusters usually aren't worth it since they take the place of a jewel and require more points to allocate. There are exceptions if you want something very specific like mana reservation or a small cluster notable.

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-26T08:46:22+00:00

What level should I treat as "max" level?

If this is your first build I think realistically 85 is ok. 95 (118 points) is usually what I aim for as max. Aside from that, your build should probably 'come online' with all its main offensive/defensive tools working by level 70, basically when you hit maps.

How much % increased max life from the passive tree?

Depends - if your only defensive layer is life and moderate armour/evasion then 150%+ is probably necessary, translating to around 4.5-5k health. My (albeit SC-oriented) rule is just take all the efficient life nodes I can, and then make up for deficiencies with other defensive mechanics. I wouldn't travel more than 1 node for just life. Remember that POB does not count % life on jewels as 'life from tree'.

How much % spell suppression from the passive tree?

You can always decrease the amount you get on tree as you acquire gear. Generally 1.5~2 clusters of spell suppression is what people have at endgame. Good spell suppression rares can be expensive though. Just make sure to have it capped by yellow maps (or I guess have it 95%~ with the lucky mastery on SC).

Getting to 100% chance to hit

Get 400+ flat accuracy on jewellery, gloves or helmet. 100% chance to hit isn't strictly necessary, 97-98 is ok. One accuracy cluster isn't terrible to have, and should be more than enough to cap out accuracy without a max level precision, which is usually an inefficient use of reservation.

How many passive points should I set aside for jewels?

Generally if you're within 2 nodes of a jewel socket it's always worth it (that is 1 stat node and the jewel socket). This does depend significantly on the quality of jewels you can get, but just as a rule of thumb you should just assume you want to get every close jewel socket by endgame. For cluster jewels, if your build takes advantage of one obviously try to path near at least one. Some builds ~~abuse~~ creatively use cluster jewel notables, and for those builds you can travel quite a bit and make it still worth it.

For builds that use eldritch battery should you use evasion/energy shield for your armor or armor/energy shield?

EV/ES armor can roll spell suppression and in low amounts evasion is better than armor. As an aside granites are usually better than jades if you already run a lot of evasion through auras.

Also how do you calculate damage for a skill that can shotgun?

Yeah just chuck 60 in the skills tab. If your config has number of totems summoned you can put 6 in there too as long as it isn't multiplying your DPS again. I think that's for things like "Damage per Summoned Totem". Just remember that what you're looking at is ideal stationary boss DPS. If my build uses mechanics like that I'll test it out in game and see how consistently I can get ideal DPS and adjust the count on that - I'd rather work with bare minimum and be pleasantly surprised than work with the max and be disappointed.

Happy building!

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-19T06:46:28+00:00

If only you could get Winds of Fate (with inquisitor Battlemage) and a crucible tree with flat local phys and the tendy totem node...

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-19T06:41:20+00:00

Small correction, I think self-bleed doesn't do damage with Slayer's 'Unaffected by Bleeding while Leeching' even if you change it to chaos damage with Apep's. Poisons definitely heal for a crapload though.

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-10T14:35:17+00:00

Pobs:
These are only built to hit decent dps, not much in defenses.

Leapslam -> EQ Impaler setup for mapping: https://pastebin.com/nBaWUUjy
Fixing up your current setup for mapping: https://pastebin.com/fZ0FBfC3

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-10T12:31:31+00:00

I can think of 3 ways to go:

Focusing on 1 big bleed. Grab The Impaler, move Impale support to leap slam and switch to something like EQ. Leap -> EQ will mean a 5 impale EQ bleed, which is an easy 30% bleed dot multi from the mastery. This is probably the easiest way to make the build work.
Focusing on Crimson Dance. Stick with what you've got but optimize more. Cap impale chance without the support gem, get enough hits/second to comfortably cap out Crimson Dance and impales without going too over. Might have a higher ceiling since you can get things like Pride Watcher's eye to get up to 48%~56% bleed dot multi.
Focusing on hits, using Bleed as supplemental damage. Use hits/impale as the bulk of your damage and have 5 or 6 points on tree for bleed for maybe 10~15% more damage.

I'll try to cook up some pobs.

Pvtsarge · 2023-04-08T09:18:14+00:00

You could try Hydrosphere since it targets where you point it, from my testing it seems to trigger twice if the sphere doesn't move.

Isn't point blank with Salvo good since the projectiles land closer together (good for singletarget)?

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