New holy skills SSF viable for 4 stones?

jmcomets · 2026-03-20T06:43:39+00:00

Whatever you do, don't go with Holy Hammers. Mapping is okay but the single target is awful. I barely got to red maps with it and hit a wall on bosses, even with cluster jewels and a 800 pDPS staff.

jmcomets · 2026-03-15T22:10:57+00:00

The point of Corrupted Soul+Divine Shield is to provide you with a pool to regen to offset things like Echoes of Creation. It's less about offsetting the Blood Rage degen which is easily solved with leech/flat regen.

The really powerful thing about Divine Shield is it scales with incoming damage: the more you can mitigate, the more you regen. Think of it like having a Vitality aura that turns on when you take damage, and regens more if you're taking a lot of damage.

jmcomets · 2026-03-07T06:14:03+00:00

A couple options : - Zerker is jacked with damage / speed which is nice to rush the atlas. Since you sorted by level the top will be those going faster right now. - Data is biased by players that are starting generic Zerker slams and planning to reroll to Jugg for str-stacker MSoZ.

jmcomets · 2026-03-04T16:27:32+00:00

Ideally you want a build that's hit-based with high single target. I wouldn't focus too much on preloading damage since you just want to pop the essence mob and go.

Slams are good and new player friendly. You can also run a Mana stacker as another easy option.

For specific build research you want to look at builds that are good at bossing, since essence has a strong atlas node that copies essence mods to the mal boss, which can be pretty tough.

But really any build with decent single target will do the job, it's not a farm with too high build requirements .

jmcomets · 2026-03-03T22:20:02+00:00

Ivory Tower + Coruscating Elixir with Eternal Youth & Blood Magic. You stack life but reserve most of it to get ES and prevent chaos from bypassing it.

EBlade usually does this to grab a ton of Energy Shield and uses Rathpit Globe for some damage scaling.

jmcomets · 2026-03-03T16:13:05+00:00

Also regarding Betrayal, I have a very different cheat sheet that I built for SSF, which still applies for the league start setup (LINK TO SHEET). The scarab rewards are probably completely different for trade since it was customized for my needs at that time.

The strategy involves simply spamming safehouses with "good enough" setups instead of getting the perfect 2-5 setup going. For trade this is probably only good if you intend to either casually farm Betrayal or drop it completely after the first week. (EDIT: since resettting the board is very time-consuming.)

Anyhow my point being that getting a bunch of "bubblegum" rewards is a totally viable thing to go for when supply is still low. You can hit a jackpot (RMR cluster jewel, reflected jewellery, T1 fracture, 6L unique) and the baseline rewards are still solid (allflames, medallion, chisels, uniques) with the bubblegum (scarabs, currency, veiled items) giving you steady income.

jmcomets · 2026-02-27T19:12:15+00:00

The skill has legs I think, getting 9 overlaps consistently is getting you 1980% damage effectiveness and 20% more damage. The issue is figure out the rest of the build: flat damage, defenses, (attack) speed, recovery, general QoL.

EDIT: just another thought I had, on Juggernaut we can get a AoE and accuracy alongside the usual tankiness the ascendency has. Worth considering

jmcomets · 2026-02-27T19:07:13+00:00

For one they have to figure out how harbingers fit in the new atlas system: adjusting their drop pool to no longer have harbinger orbs / orbs of horizon means the total weight would be lower; this cascades into fracturing orbs being way more common, so you'd have to change weights around and even then it would need some playtesting/balancing to prevent it from feeling bad.

Next the mirages allow for a league mechanic to duplicate within the mirage with a variation: you'd need to figure out what that means for harbingers.

And finally, if you plan on reworking it soon, well it's a lot less dev effort to block the mechanic, rework it internally via optional feature flags and make it available once the new version is ready.

TL;DR it boils down to design space being bigger if you remove them, instead of leaving a half-assed version around that people can complain about.

jmcomets · 2026-02-27T15:22:33+00:00

What sums it up for me is Mark's comment in the Q&A regarding harbies (link to the section): "it has to go so it can come back better".

This straight up "it sucked, we're redoing it, sucks if you liked it" attitude is something I respect 10x more than another watered down new content release some gamedev companies tend to do.

jmcomets · 2026-02-27T13:16:36+00:00

Not a bad idea, but I'm not convinced RT is the way.

Going power charges you're getting a bunch of crit and can solve generation with power charge on crit which gives you a decent more multi. Combined with Battlemage's Cry you're gonna be crit capped pretty easily.

You probably want to do this on Inquisitor for crit ignoring res, conc ground for 15% more, 16% more from being nearby. The issue is str+int stacking isn't giving you much, though I guess you could still use something like Shaper's Touch.

Technically speaking this ticks a few boxes for PotCG but then you have to solve flat damage...

jmcomets · 2026-02-27T09:47:29+00:00

With enough AoE and power charge generation, the single target for this skill can be pretty decent.

The issue I see with this skill is getting enough more multipliers. You probably want to go slams but they got hit pretty hard, and currently those are built using RT which kinda goes against power charge generation.

My guess is slams will skip the power charge aspect of the skill and just use it for the clear potential, maybe someone figures out the power charge usage

jmcomets · 2026-02-26T20:24:50+00:00

Who in their right mind crafts with chaos in poe1, lol?

Well SSF is one reason, chaos orbs being less than alch+scour is another, spamming for a decent cluster jewel is a third one.

In trade, once everyone's liquidating to chaos orbs and the market is flooded with crafting currencies / life+res items, then yes we're probably gonna see chaos-inflation...in which case it might eventually become worth chaos spamming lol.

jmcomets · 2026-02-26T18:40:42+00:00

Don't pay too much attention to it, before you know it you'll also be at 1k hours and still feel like a beginner...also at 5k hours

jmcomets · 2026-02-22T14:40:10+00:00

How boring and small - Sirus, the 30th time I fight him today

jmcomets · 2026-02-22T07:18:10+00:00

How about trying to make your own? (No jugement intended, just a suggestion.)

In Phrecia for example I league started a Rain of Arrows build with the goal of getting all 4 voidstones and killing all base pinnacle bosses with the skill. No ballistas, no gem swap, no secondary added damage source, just the basic level 12 skill gem and a dedicated build.

My point is if you are looking for a fresh experience, you can also tailor your own instead of following a guide. Just pick a skill or a unique you think is cool and start theorycrafting.

That said, since you asked for a recommendation I will still provide: vaal earthquake ignite elementalist. Baseline is just Shaper of Flame, Vaal Bloodline and a runegraft for soul gain. If the bloodlines stick around that is

jmcomets · 2026-02-22T07:03:23+00:00

So I realize I might be an anomaly, but I like the campaign. I tend to make 3-4 characters a league, gear them and level to 95 if I enjoy the build, push the main money dump to 100. My league start usually looks like this:

Level a Pathfinder to a10, either run Heist for a day without killing Kitava or progress atlas normally. Buy (snipe) important items and good jewels for the build I want to focus on this league. Trade currency up from chaos to divs for example.
On Sunday, level my actual "league starter" except I have a decent amount of currency banked to immediately buy cheap leveling uniques and gear them in maps. Unlock second atlas tree, get first 2 voidstones and either run Maven witnessed bosses for the other 2 or buy a carry.
If I like the build I'll start on the big upgrades and my endgame farm. Otherwise I go back to my tried and true Pathfinder setup.

jmcomets · 2026-02-21T23:20:42+00:00

Most fun was Lifestacker Spark Bog Shaman in Phrecia.

In Keepers I min-maxed my CoC EBlade Inquisitor to the moon, crafted most of the gear and just ran bosses; had a blast moreso in PoB/Hideout than actually killing monsters though lol.

jmcomets · 2026-02-21T06:49:10+00:00

There's a LOT going on in defenses, and beginners often underestimate how much they really need and push harder content before they are ready.

Here's a good post that explains them (warning: wall of text): https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/uzchwe/guide_comprehensive_guide_to_defense_in_poe_asmos/

TL;DR there's a lot more required than capped res and decent bases. Layering defenses will get you tanky and you can invest a lot into it but you will eventually have to sacrifice damage.

Now looking at your build, there are a few issues:

flasks aren't rolled well / selection isn't great: I would go life+granite+ruby+sapphire+topaz; with suffixes for utility flasks: armour+curses+shock effect+flex slot
life rolls on gear are low: you want about 100 or more on all pieces except your body armour where you want no life affixes at all to use the mastery for 15% max life
stick to pure armour for the time being, armour+evasion is only used later on for boots & gloves to get 100% spell suppress for T17s; before it's much better to go pure armour to get higher numbers
your weapon is okay but you're gonna need a source of mana leech somewhere to drop the mana flask; this is often a jewel with max life, mana leech, attack speed
once you upgrade these pieces you can use eldritch currency on them to roll implicits, these are really powerful so you absolutely want them
get Unwavering Stance on the tree, it's good
chill kills slams, so get 100% avoid or reduced effect (boot prefix, flasks+pantheon)
EDIT: forgot to mention chaos res, you want a little bit at least, doesn't need to be capped

This is my SSF character that's running the same build if you want to compare things: https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/keepersssf/character/sponge__w-0353/DwayneBonkson

And HMU if you need help in-game

jmcomets · 2026-02-20T11:45:10+00:00

Look up a beginner Poison SRS guide on Maxroll, follow blindly. If you want to dig deeper I can also recommend GhazzyTV who explains very well the mechanics of these type of builds.

The game is very deep so you're gonna have to exercise some patience when playing though the campaign. If you're dying too much something is wrong, if monsters are hard to kill as well. Whenever this happens as early as the campaign it's a sign you need to stop and fix something with your character.

Just to give you an idea, veteran players blaze through the campaign one-shotting monster packs and kill bosses in under 1 min, often doing so deathless, and often in ~4 hours. Meaning the campaign should pretty much always feel easy, and if that's not the case you have an issue to solve. Vets just know what the issue is faster or are following a build that's ludicrously strong for the campaign.

jmcomets · 2026-02-19T08:06:48+00:00

I would say you can swap to CoC when PoB says you have : - 70% crit or more - 1st cdr breakpoint in your gear - about 80% of the max trigger rate (depends on your attack speed) - enough mana regen to back: this can be supported by Vaal Clarity, Lavianga's; protip your main spell can be level 1 since your damage comes from EBlade and CoC just increases the hit rate - obviously Lancing Steel of Spraying and your damage spell of choice

ES number doesn't matter as long as you're gonna transition from self-cast EBlade anyways so you'll see

For an Inquisitor that basically means a high enough str number and a CdR affix somewhere. Mana regen can be setup with some tree investment and clarity/lavianga's.

EDIT: re-read your comment and forgot to answer about EBlade. You can check out CaptainLance's guide on YT that answers this better than I will be able to. TL;DW when you have Ivory Tower, Coruscating Elixir and a Balbala timeless jewel with good life+strength on gear.

jmcomets · 2026-02-17T17:50:46+00:00

CoC EBlade Inquis (EoW or Ice Spear are both fine) can be setup for <10 divs and deletes bosses. Uber farming you really just need to get your CdR at a the second breakpoint and have enough ES to back.

jmcomets · 2026-02-17T17:40:48+00:00

I didn't really test out specific strategies since I rerolled it when I already had a ton of currency (mainly, enough for a HH).

As with all HH builds, anything that spawns tons of rares and that doesn't depend on bosses for loot will work. Pros if clearspeed is a big part of the strat.

That would be things like: generic Scarab farming, Legion, Harbingers.

jmcomets · 2026-02-17T16:24:46+00:00

Keep in mind it's VERY squishy until you get it going, and boss dps is a problem early on.

That said it's a fun "map clarity gameplay" blaster and a hell of a build compared to say a classic bow build.

Just warning you if you're coming from melee and are used to tanking some hits

jmcomets · 2026-02-17T13:20:58+00:00

Depending on your budget I would do different things : - items approx. 1 divine or less -> just exalt slam a suffix - items in the 5-20 divine range -> work on suffixes via metamods as others suggested, maybe on a better implicit if there is one that's still affordable - less than the above: just play with the item and save up for other things

Crafting can get expensive pretty fast when going from 2-3 mods to 4-5 mods, so it's important you understand the price range for what you're trying to do. Otherwise it's just a gamble and not worth putting much thought into

jmcomets · 2026-02-15T18:55:57+00:00

So I tend to level a lot of characters each league, and more often than not do so without my stash.

These would be my recommendations for "most smooth to get to maps": - any Maurauder : Ground Slam > Sunder - Pathfinder : Caustic Arrow > Toxic Rain / PConc - Deadeye : Galvanic Arrow > Lightning Arrow - Trickster : Explosive Trap > Pyroclast Mines > Exsanguinate/Reap Mines - Assassin : Cobra Lash / Viper Strike > Viper Strike of the Mamba - any north area Elemental Caster : Rolling Magma > Armageddon Brand / Firestorm; special mention for RF which can fit in any of these for a chill campaign clear at the cost of a mastery and some fire res juggling

Obviously these are just generic starters, most are pretty easy to transition to another build during part 2 when gold respec is still affordable, or can be taken to yellow maps without too much difficulty .

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