[3.3] HeiroFat: the Pen Is Mightier (HC, All Content, Perm IC, Boss Killer)

I got a question more centered around playstyle. Since this is my first poet's pen character, is there a method to controlling the bodyswap more accurately? It feels a bit suicidal until getting IC up and running. (cruel lab+romiras). Find myself teleporting into all kinds of sketchy situations during the lvling process.

Basically don't move your mouse too far away from your character, the further you are away the lower chance of Unearth landing before the Bodyswap is casted.
Even doing this will sometimes get bodyswap to pick a random corpse, but you can't win them all.

I've been leveling both a Juggy version (Now deleted as I want to try Indigon and Juggy didn't have the mana to push it high) and a Hierofat, what I found is that Ice Nova is an amazing alternative to IC before you get to perma IC levels. It slows and helps with the clear.
It's fine running a triple color wand until you hit red maps. Iron Will works nicely for the red until 60 where you swap to IC, then swap out Ice Nova for Elemental Focus.

did not factor in travel time on unearth lol. no wonder as i was making big leaps. Thanks for the tip!

Did you try the belt+boots 20% cooldown reduction ? I think it makes the spells cast 0.05 seconds faster, the normal cd is 0.25 seconds, so the 20% lowered would make the cd 0.20. But your AS will have to be 0.21-0.25 to benefit from it. Without CD gear, max AS should be 0.26, so that you don't attack before the CD is over.

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yemanlp540 wrote:

Did you try the belt+boots 20% cooldown reduction ? I think it makes the spells cast 0.05 seconds faster, the normal cd is 0.25 seconds, so the 20% lowered would make the cd 0.20. But your AS will have to be 0.21-0.25 to benefit from it. Without CD gear, max AS should be 0.26, so that you don't attack before the CD is over.

RicoKGB did some testing on this for Mjolner which is also a 250ms CD trigger (the difference being Mjolner is FIRE ALL THE THINGS and limited to lightning where Poet's Pen is sequential)
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1846362

I'd recommend reading the Attacks per Second part of his excellent post.

TL:DR 20% CDR gets you 0.208 ms trigger cooldown. Meaning you'd want about 4.7 attacks per second.

Since the cooldown is per skill gem, you can basically scale that to twice that amount for a 2 skill gem setup like this one.
Capping you out at around a nifty 9.4 APS for fully taking advantage of the cooldowns.

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SilverSequence wrote:

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lalib wrote:

In SC can't I just manually cast IC? Or use a high level CWDT?

You certainly can. If you're going that route, I'd think about using the Juggernaut variant (listed in original post and elsewhere in this thread). You can use either eye of innocence or scold's bridle (with a bit of work) to make it tick. The reason to go this direction is that you'll have far more endurance charges so your defenses when IC isn't up will be higher (and IC will last longer when you do cast it. The tradeoff is a smaller health pool due to weaker MoM and less mana (if you go MoM at all).

Thanks, I figured it wasn't worth a smaller life pool if the damage was gonna be similar with Jugg version. I saw you put a possible Ascendant option but I ended up liking grabbing Elemental overload and forgetting about crit, seems more flexible if I wanna change things up.

I just finished Merc Lab in Bestiary League using the HeiroFat version. I used the same gear at level 12 as I did at level 65 with the exception of Romira's Banquet. In SC it was pretty much hold right mouse until Act 10, I did die a few times because I didn't use Immortal Call until Merc Lab (ran normal, cruel, then merc back to back at level 65) and I don't think I was res capped. Bodyswap by it self is a nifty defense mechanic.

One thing that helped a lot was using a -8 Elreon ring, brings cost of Frenzy down to 3 for me. Also when mana was an issue very early game I just used default attack for a few levels.

Overall this is a very fun build and I look forward to taking it into high tier maps and bossing. I'm not 100% sure which direction I wanna take my char, but I might do some light magic find with sadima's/goldwyrm while I run maps to level up a bit.





Gear I used while leveling/Merc Lab in Bestiary League:

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Rinani wrote:

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yemanlp540 wrote:

Did you try the belt+boots 20% cooldown reduction ? I think it makes the spells cast 0.05 seconds faster, the normal cd is 0.25 seconds, so the 20% lowered would make the cd 0.20. But your AS will have to be 0.21-0.25 to benefit from it. Without CD gear, max AS should be 0.26, so that you don't attack before the CD is over.

RicoKGB did some testing on this for Mjolner which is also a 250ms CD trigger (the difference being Mjolner is FIRE ALL THE THINGS and limited to lightning where Poet's Pen is sequential)
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1846362

I'd recommend reading the Attacks per Second part of his excellent post.

TL:DR 20% CDR gets you 0.208 ms trigger cooldown. Meaning you'd want about 4.7 attacks per second.

Since the cooldown is per skill gem, you can basically scale that to twice that amount for a 2 skill gem setup like this one.
Capping you out at around a nifty 9.4 APS for fully taking advantage of the cooldowns.

Mmm I think the main skill that you would want to min max for is probably only Volatile Dead right ? Unless Poet's Pen doesn't bypass IC when IC is on CD.

Since Bodyswap and Unearth is kinda softcapped by the proj speed of unearth, the CD recovery on these 2 don't seem that crucial either.

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Rinani wrote:

Basically don't move your mouse too far away from your character, the further you are away the lower chance of Unearth landing before the Bodyswap is casted.
Even doing this will sometimes get bodyswap to pick a random corpse, but you can't win them all.

I've been leveling both a Juggy version (Now deleted as I want to try Indigon and Juggy didn't have the mana to push it high) and a Hierofat, what I found is that Ice Nova is an amazing alternative to IC before you get to perma IC levels. It slows and helps with the clear.
It's fine running a triple color wand until you hit red maps. Iron Will works nicely for the red until 60 where you swap to IC, then swap out Ice Nova for Elemental Focus.

If you have some extra money I'd suggest running a second set of Pens on swap without Bodyswap for single target, they also help with sketchy situations or for getting charges up.

Unearth-GMP-IC
VD-Conc-FirePen.

Also I'd go Conc Effect over Elemental Focus for VD, they give somewhat similar damage but Conc effect is ~3% more damage according to PoB, and more is more, the smaller AoE part really doesn't matter too much.

Man I literally almost cried coloring this fkng thing, that was horrible, basically just sat there and lit all my currency on fire.....thats going to be 1 sexy spam skill though.

Frenzy - Faster Attacks - Add. Accuracy - Culling Strike - Curse on Hit - Enfeeble

Frenzy accuracy is already 95% so shouldnt have any problems sticking my curse on bosses.

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Deadscale wrote:

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Rinani wrote:

Basically don't move your mouse too far away from your character, the further you are away the lower chance of Unearth landing before the Bodyswap is casted.
Even doing this will sometimes get bodyswap to pick a random corpse, but you can't win them all.

I've been leveling both a Juggy version (Now deleted as I want to try Indigon and Juggy didn't have the mana to push it high) and a Hierofat, what I found is that Ice Nova is an amazing alternative to IC before you get to perma IC levels. It slows and helps with the clear.
It's fine running a triple color wand until you hit red maps. Iron Will works nicely for the red until 60 where you swap to IC, then swap out Ice Nova for Elemental Focus.

If you have some extra money I'd suggest running a second set of Pens on swap without Bodyswap for single target, they also help with sketchy situations or for getting charges up.

Unearth-GMP-IC
VD-Conc-FirePen.

Also I'd go Conc Effect over Elemental Focus for VD, they give somewhat similar damage but Conc effect is ~3% more damage according to PoB, and more is more, the smaller AoE part really doesn't matter too much.

Weapon swap is definitely the best option, because hitting 7.8 or if using CDR 9.4 APS is pretty out of the question for a Hiero. Juggy might pull it off with some crazy ACC items, but then you'd have spent so many slots on that.

I still need to test it just skips IC when it is on cooldown, if it doesn't the Unearth/IC in one and VD in the other still gives problems as you won't have the corpses to sustain VD.

If doing a weapon swap, VD - Ele Focus - IC is definitely the way to go as Fire Pen only beats it on the map bosses and Shaper. Since it is for clearing Ele Focus also beats Conc.
The VD - Conc - Fire Pen is the best for bosses as you said though and one should go for that in the swap.