[3.7] Occultist/Trickster Bane SSF SHC lvl 100 Rank 3 Build guide / All Content / lvl 100 viable

Hello,

i wanted to try this to make it into PS4 main character. Damage is fine actually great atm but I am really sqeeshy. I got to Act 6 but I died 6-7 times on the way here.

Am I doing something wrong? I have trouble getting my reses at max as I always have dilemma of going for sockets/links vs res.

When you were doing SSF HC did you have some stops to farm levels?

Like Act 4 Lake or Act 5 chambers?

Thanks

Hi there,

Many congrats on making third place!! And many thanks for making a brief writeup of your build this league. I am excited to try it in HCSSF but I have no experience with chaos or ES builds at all. So I have some noob questions:


1. Do you actually cast Blight beyond leveling or just the Vaal Blight skill?


2. Do you use Malevolence / Discipline? How do you maintain mana? Is the mana regen in the tree enough? At level 25 I lose mana by MoM, 70% reserved mana from the auras and by casting skills.


3. In maps do you use Discipline or Vaal Discipline? Or both?


4. Malevolence is not in your final map setup. Why not? Did you replace it by aspect of the spider?


5. A lot of references show that Bane is not affected by Area Damage modifiers, only increased Area of Effect modifiers. However, your tree contains a few Area Damage nodes. Are these points still worth taking just for the Area of Effect? Same question for your amulet (area damage and area of effect craft)
edit: you could even skip the area damage node north of Witch for an extra AoE node in the templar area.



6. Why do you skip the 50% increased mana cluster behind MoM? Wouldn't this give a lot of extra eHP?



Looking forward to your answers :)

1. Blight is linked to Infused Channeling, so it's a nice damage increase to keep the Infusion buff up.

2. For leveling you use both. At later levels you have to drop Malevolence for a Blasphemy-Temporal Chains. At even later levels with a nice amount of energy shield you can drop Discipline in favor of Malevolence, but you also need to path to some reduced mana reservation nodes.

3. See above. Vaal Discipline is always used, nice emergency button.

4. See above. OP didn't update his guide to reflect his endgame changes.

5. Can't comment on the damage increases, but the AoE is huge, especially coupled together with Spell Cascade. Not sure where it would be without the nodes though, didn't try.

6. I'm not sure why OP didn't go for all four nodes, but I guess you could just try it out and see if it's worth.

OP isn't replying to the thread actively, so he probably won't be sharing his insights any time soon. I'm really glad he did the write-up though. It's a very nice build. Efficient and safe. Just wish those damned gloves would drop.

Thanks for your reply! Your answers are very useful to me. I was particularly confused on the aura setup but your explanation clears that up.

Enjoying the build a lot so far. I usually only play necromancers and the likes and I'm really looking forward to discovering more...

abit nooby question how do you get Vixen's Entrapment? cant rly find any info about it

This is maybe the best allround build i´ve tried in poe. Better than my lowlife auramancer spectre flagship. I run it in standard with better gear than ssf ofcourse and REALLY recommend ppl to try it out.

Obvious gg gear upgrades for non ssf is skin of the loyal with +2 to all gems and empower. Also gives you surprisingly high amounts of ES with good gear.

vixen´s entrapment with +1 to all gems corruption and lvl 4 enhance, hello :)

I don´t mess around with blight at all it feels a bit last year tbh.. Bane will kill anything including shaper and whatnot fast enough and with 4 link ED and wither they go down real fast. Standing still channeling is a dangerous way to get a faster kill imo.. Dots and running around is the way to go.

The build kills bandits like a champ with no danger what so ever even on the highest lvl maps. They just melt and pose no threat with all those curses. Alvas temple thingies are a joke too, boom and the mobs are all gone. Feels less like dps and more like total annihilation :)

Curious about the Jewel setup and thoughts? Thanks!@

Optimal gem setup is 1 curse in bane 6 link and the rest with enhance in gloves.

I run Bane, controlled destruction, efficacy, swift affliction, empower and temporal chains in skin of the loyal. Optimal but a case COULD be made for running 2 curses to lower mana cost and get empower in gloves too. Another thing to consider is swapping controlled destruction for void manipulation since that skin of the loyal colouring is alot cheaper.

For 6 link in chest without + to socketed gems prolly skip empower (maybe lvl 4 beats void manipulation cba to check)

Jewels: Watcher´s eye with non-ailment chaos damage over time when using malevolence

The others +4 non-ailment chaos damage over time and whatever other damage and % ES. I have minion damage on most of mine and on wand (spiritual aid passive)

For the rich/very patient ppl abyss jewels are a option but omg they are expensive/superhard to roll.

Curious: Why craft a "Imbued Wand" instead of a higher-level base wand, e.g. "Prophecy Wand" ?