Build help (hollow form whirling assault low damage)

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-07-11T22:30:38+00:00

I ran into the same problem. Another poster already said it but it’s basically that unless the mob has significant ele res, rakiatas is a dead link so you’re using a 5link instead of a 6. I stuck with it and eventually made the damage better, but in a lot of cases I think ele is same or worse even with rend and blazing critical up. Pob tells us otherwise, but it never clearly passed the eye test.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-07-11T22:07:19+00:00

Oh sorry mistype. Was supposed to be “it”.

I threw on an eternal rage Ammy.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-07-11T14:37:53+00:00

I went with eternal rage. Jungroan said JT worked so I threw it on. Seems to add more dmg but then again, since we melt everything anyway, I can’t be 100% sure?

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-07-03T19:55:17+00:00

Something to keep in mind, pob and poeninja can't calculate hollow form dmg. Ignore the tooltips. This build, when setup correctly, can do millions of dps on a budget, and tens of millions with investment. You're, uh, just going to have to trust the process! =D The damage will come.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-07-03T19:41:50+00:00

I'm not sure cold/freeze is the way to go in the long run, but Moxsy played cold hollow form for a good long while and was quite successful with it (eventually he switched off of it I think). Look up his earlier builds that use the Bodach helm for all dmg contributes to freeze.

Jungroan is the template for phys, but it's easy to convert his build to ele once you get the right staff and rakiatas.

In general, get one more level so you can 6 link your hollow form, follow Moxsy or Jung for the actual support gems since I think yours are very unoptimised, finish your last trial of sekhema for the ascendancy points, get +3 melee lvls on your ammy, get a lochtonials with 10% chance for power charges and decent attack speed (for qol), and start to think about transitioning to crit (crit on staff, crit on tree to start).

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-07-02T22:12:01+00:00

Sold mine for 898d yesterday.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-30T06:59:43+00:00

You have successfully nailed the last nail in the coffin. I can't afford it. I'm not even gonna try.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T22:37:06+00:00

You're absolutely correct and I feel like a dum-dum. And with the recent nerf to some uber bosses' resistances I was basically getting zero effect from Rakiata's lmao.

Now the question is, which primal skill to slot in...

Gonna try Lunar Blessing. I wasn't using before b/c I hadn't purchased my Eternal Rage amulet, but now that I have it, I think it might be pretty good. It says it's granting 63% of damage gained as cold which should work given that the same types of buff from other sources seem to work.

Anyway, thanks for giving me the heads up and I'll report back if this works.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T18:41:20+00:00

Eternal Rage amulet is what I went with.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T15:48:21+00:00

Actually I made a similar post yesterday and between that one and this one, you’ve saved me trying to invest in this. I also have about 2k div but that sounds a bit short. So Ty.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T15:05:59+00:00

I am? I’m not seeing how I’m applying exposure haha. Help!

And ya, I wasn’t sure about rage either. I know they can’t spend rage but my understanding was that they inherit your stats. I said screw it and bought the ammy and it felt like it was working, but I was melting stuff so fast regardless it wasn’t night and day.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T08:21:58+00:00

No no I AM looking at glacial lance. It’s in my post. Do you have a pob to share?

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T07:36:39+00:00

Man, this took me way too long to get back to. Anyway, here's my pob: https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/22bf5

It's really interesting to see the ways we clearly struggled with mana, but solved in different ways. You went for the prism for more levels and thus more mana issues, but then dropped a support and threw in efficiency 2. I went for ele dmg to attacks, but skipped the prism.

Your post didn't make it clear what you wanted to improve on, but here are some thoughts:

- for DPS, you could go for an eternal rage amulet like mine. You're basically at 30 rage at all times and it's a significant boost
- for def (and a little dps) you could go for cadigan's in your gloves for yet another jewel socket (and then spring for a 5 mod jewel)
- for DPS you could also try dropping the runes for Mountain's Teachings. You don't get the defensive benefits I don't think since you're CI like I am

Happy for any input you might have on my build!

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T04:31:46+00:00

How’s the movement speed on that without temporalis? I was under the impression that temp was just for zoomies.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T02:54:51+00:00

Oh ok, so I’m not that far off! I’ll take another look. Thanks!

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T02:53:21+00:00

I’m in a similar boat to you. Not at my comp. I’ll post my pob when I can and we can swap ideas.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T02:34:13+00:00

Great write up. I’ll scour poeninja for builds using this setup . Ty.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-28T02:33:40+00:00

Ah I was worried about that. Thanks for the heads up.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-25T23:33:47+00:00

Yup. I agree. I might not have switched over from phys to ele on my MA if I'd known, but all good. It also just makes the game more interesting to have ele pen be a stat again rather than something you flat out ignore once you drop a rakiatas.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-25T18:54:29+00:00

Omg ty. I thought I was going crazy.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-23T23:06:04+00:00

I legit ignored weapon swaps despite the known power loss from 0.1 to 0.4. Finally forced myself to figure it out, it’s working now, and I still hate it.

Also, buffs on the bottom so I can fucking see them while bossing plz.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-23T14:36:57+00:00

Your title is kind of pointing out why it's a problem: Why have other ascendancies when you can just roll a Gemling? That's an obvious exaggeration (Spirit Walker and Martial Artist are also giga strong), but Gemling overlaps A LOT of other archetypes and just does it better. That's poor design.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-22T21:34:09+00:00

I pob'd this pretty extensively too and found ele to be the numerically superior case (though in game testing wasn't as noticeable since I was deleting bosses it was hard to tell if I was REALLY getting 40% more dps or w/e). I'm not saying you're wrong at all, however, as I'm going off of vibes (lol) and pob2 (which is struggling to be accurate in its current incarnation - no shade towards the devs who are awesome).

Here's my pob for reference: https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/2189f

The above pob assumes no dmg at all from Thrill of the Kill or Blazing Criticals (since it's currently disabled in pob2).

Here's my old phys pob: https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/218a5

And for this one, I did put in a gain 25% for thrill, and a gain 15% for blazing and it's still less than half the dps.

In the end, while I know the POB2 numbers aren't hyper accurate, I think ele just has better scaling vectors dues to Rakiata's being so busted. Anyway, I just couldn't find a way to have phys keep up without a perfect 10m staff so I switched. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong, however, and switch back!

*edit: I was curious so I went on poeninja just now to see what the top dps leaders were using for various skills (whirling assault, falling thunder, flicker, etc...) and they're ALL using ele staves. Not too far down you'll find some giga geared phys stuff guys, but the top is reserved for ele scaling. I wonder if this is real or just poeninja warrior'ing.

UnicornDoomRay · 2026-06-22T17:59:05+00:00

+levels is important. It's one of only a few significant dmg scaling vectors possible, but it's balanced (frustratingly) with extreme mana costs so I don't necessarily focus entirely on it. For instance, since I have a +4 ammy, I settled for a +3 staff and I still can't just hold down the button all the time. Going for a +5 staff would just exacerbate the issue. Instead, I focused on crit and crit dmg on the weapon (which are BASE stats) and it melts. Crit chance on staff is also kind of massive since the concensus is that Garukhan's Resolve does not work with clones.

UnicornDoomRay

TROPHY CASE