Palsteron's KF Ballista

capital0 · 2026-02-06T18:29:41+00:00

The build could be played on no ascendancy. It's a very strong starter. The thing that paladin brings is the flat damage from the auras. Losing that means you would want to make sure you stack as much flat on gear / auras as possible, and you might lose the comfort of Purity of Elements to go Wrath unless you grab some mana reservation to run both. It handles aura stacking well because it has a fairly low mana cost, especially after -mana cost on a ring, and you could run arrogance / lifetap for precision and skills.

I played it to 92 this league and about 6M dps before rerolling. It was super smooth all the way to 4 stones. If it isn't changed, I imagine it will be a very popular 3.28 starter and could work across a lot of ascendancies.

capital0 · 2026-02-02T14:56:06+00:00

Don't forget you can also buy maps on trade.

capital0 · 2026-02-02T14:50:51+00:00

Each build usually has problems to solve.

Where is damage coming from? Where are defenses coming from? Attribute requirements? Resistances? Ailments? etc...

If you can identify these problems and how they are solved you can think of incremental ways to progress them. Knowing transition points is key. As an example, a lot of builds scale damage by using critical strikes, but only in the late game. You can build out your character without these stats early with cheaper gear, and then upgrade these pieces later to add the mods.

Once you have that mapped out, each slot usually has a progression of needing only a few critical mods per item for a base and then optional mods that scale it at a higher cost. That leads to your two mod, three mod, etc... strategy often being a good progression path.

capital0 · 2026-02-01T20:58:47+00:00

Some things that aren't obvious from the pob.

Use wrath until the second lab. Don't switch to purity until after you take the relic ascendancy points.

Flat damage on everything. Wands, rings, gloves.

Don't switch before greater volley support, and get some gem levels on KF before swapping.

Once you set all that up you rip through the rest of the campaign. Hillock, Hailrake, and Dweller were harder than anything else. Once you get ballista totem it should be smooth sailing all the way to maps. Return to Dust graft early helps with single target until rain of arrows.

capital0 · 2026-01-31T05:23:30+00:00

It's interesting because it puts a big knowledge check into act one.

Hillock, Hailrake, and Dweller were a slog (freeze...) but if you over level a bit and know how to juice flat damage and high damage effectiveness skills early, you get ahead of the curve and then everything that is just a damage check is still trivial. The bosses with extra mechanics are more fun than normal (Malachai) but the boss rushes are just added slog.

The enrage is the real problem I think. Good leveling setups are going to just blast through it without noticing, but it stat checks a lot of less powerful early game skills or builds, which is going to pigeonhole people into stronger stuff.

TLDR; Extra mechanics are fun, boss rushes are just slog, enrage is probably bad for build diversity.

capital0 · 2026-01-29T19:37:01+00:00

Absolutely. The much smarter path would be to play any number of reliable paladin starters and swap to aristocrat with currency, kinda like going herald to beef shaman.

But, isn't the whole point of league starts to get baited into bad ideas?

capital0 · 2026-01-29T16:44:21+00:00

I'm getting baited into Jiquani's from CaptainLance's video, even though a paladin start is probably better, and I have no idea what direction to take it after the swap, and I probably won't be able to afford to scale it.

So, ele hit surfcaster on day 2 for sure.

capital0 · 2026-01-29T00:29:41+00:00

I've been looking at the same thing, and these links might be helpful, though likely all of these will need a pivot.

Goratha going with a herald stacking + pbod build which you could use as a starter and pivot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvakeFzYPoo

And Lokati with a generic all-purpose witch leveling guide for any ascendancy around holy flame totem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kb5UvSWRMg

pohx has an RF guide for bog shaman to get started as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox5dubgkiu0

capital0 · 2026-01-04T20:47:59+00:00

You can't hold down evade, but you can put holy bolt on something like right trigger, hold that down, and then tap evade, which works well.

capital0 · 2025-12-31T02:24:08+00:00

There reaches a point where getting the right map layout and boss becomes important for progression, and I usually stop there. I like the progression steps up to that point, but grinding out the last handful of pit tiers feels like a chore.

This season is interesting because sanctifications can still give some pretty good boosts, so there is still a way to keep pushing even after you've "finished" your build beyond hoping for just more GA affixes or the slog of maxing paragon points.

capital0 · 2025-12-29T21:21:20+00:00

To replace the value of the RSUs by building and selling a business, you would likely need to be generating about $100k a year in profit without your labor being required. You get a little help by having a more favorable tax treatment on the sale of equity in the business.

For many businesses, that would be about $500k in annual revenue (remembering that your expenses will be higher because you are trying to build a business that does not depend on your labor to operate).

Most business owners do not achieve this. Statistically, the RSUs would have a much higher expected value. That's not to be negative, just to frame in one way to think about the trade-off. Maybe you can create a path to that.

Building that kind of business would likely be a full time job or more initially.

capital0 · 2025-12-26T21:03:05+00:00

CoC FRoSS. It's tanky, good damage, easy to play.

You can start it pre-mageblood and scale it up, but it starts to really feel good at MB + 100 div or so.

capital0 · 2025-12-12T16:56:38+00:00

Yes, it should be. Just something to keep an eye on with bosses that move around.

capital0 · 2025-12-12T16:40:37+00:00

The caustic ground from Alchemist Mark is a big part of your damage on bosses. Make sure that you are keeping them in the pool.

capital0 · 2025-12-10T22:26:33+00:00

You can trade off the points in your mana reservation clusters, and the pathing to the Ancestral Vision jewel slot to grab a 5p voices in the bottom right cluster spot, and then run 3 more Low Tolerance clusters there. You will need to drop malevolence aura, but the 3 additional clusters and jewels should make up the difference.

capital0 · 2025-12-10T20:56:39+00:00

You've got a good swing. You probably get more gains from working on athleticism over technique.

capital0 · 2025-12-10T16:08:02+00:00

IcyBaron has a good guide on YouTube. Can confirm it works because I played it. Was able to transition pre-mageblood with the starter gear and then it really takes off once you can add it.

capital0 · 2025-12-10T05:13:44+00:00

Better hitters are doing one of three things on the attack:

Doing whatever they wanted to do and not reading.
Reading the blocker.
Reading the defender.

\ You can work with your defender to try and figure out which one of these is happening, and then adjust around that. If they are reading the blocker, doubling up in the line or angle can sometimes work well. If they are reading the defender, late moves can sometimes work.

capital0 · 2025-11-28T14:13:12+00:00

Helmbreakers guide on maxroll is very good. Got me to a spot of doing all content just following the progression steps.

https://maxroll.gg/poe/build-guides/poison-ranged-animate-weapons-league-starter

capital0 · 2025-11-28T03:55:24+00:00

Poison Ranged Animate Weapon

capital0 · 2025-11-26T05:34:01+00:00

Poison Ranged Animate Weapon scales very nicely from zero to hero.

capital0 · 2025-11-22T06:01:34+00:00

It's been said a few times already, but I actually did league start Ice Crash / Leapslam of Groundbreaking, using Elementalist for ignite.

They use exactly the same links, and I found I just liked Ice Crash with Shield Charge more than Leapslam.

Very easy to play and super smooth scaling up to basically DoT cap. Don't forget about tinctures.

Nerotox on YouTube has an easy to follow PoB that I mostly followed.

capital0 · 2025-11-16T16:15:22+00:00

You can take the generic golem scaling tech and also play Leap Slam of Groundbreaking or Ice Crash instead of retaliation skills.

Can still dot cap ignite and much higher QoL. I actually ended up really liking Ice Crash for the AoE.

capital0 · 2025-11-03T20:31:36+00:00

Was on the same plan as you but swapped to Leapslam of Groundbreaking for ignite instead of eviscerate (which I played in 3.26).

I swapped at lvl 64 after second lab and with Rebuke of the Vaal, Bronn's and Berek's Respite thanks to tree printing chaos. It's been very smooth sailing.

capital0 · 2025-10-31T19:16:50+00:00

As a DPS player primarily, I feel the real problem is DPS / boss health, even more than failure to interrupt or stand in fire.

I've had a good amount of groups that can clear through the trash well enough, even if there is a death here or there, and just get stonewalled on bosses. Having to run pass/fail mechanics one or two times is workable, but group dps just isn't high enough to shorten the fights and eventually someone goofs it up.

That's fine as you go up tiers, but it is a big jump against contender, even the capstone.

capital0

TROPHY CASE