[3.7] The Sweepzerker (Hegemony's Era crit Sweep Berserker)


Hegemony's Era full phys crit Sweep Berserker. Crazy damage and harder to kill than you might think.
I'm not sure are the Shockwave Calculations right, but atm the PoB shows me over 7 million dps with 7k life. Could be even more, if GGG gives me enough buttons to plant the War Banner.
I wish I had better PC to make a video or at least a gif for you.

Path of Building link:
https://pastebin.com/Sx6qKMu0
If you don't know what Path of Building is, google it, download, install, press "import/export" in top left corner, then "import from Pastebin" and paste the link above.

Pros and cons

Pros:
- Very high damage, that's why we pick Berserker after all.
- You don't really die while farming, cause you stunlock everything. 90% of my deaths came from random freezes. 10% from bosses with lots of damage mods, cause I wanted to check, can I melt them down faster than they fight back.
- Smooth and simple playstyle, you just Leap Slam in, press a button, everything around you gets deleted and you repeat it with the next pack. Sometimes you may want to place totem, drink potions or cast Berserk.
- The start is cheap, then sky is the limit for scaling, depends how much do you want to invest.

Cons:
- Berserker lacks any ascendancy defense bonuses, obviously you'll never be as tanky as Juggernaut. Lag or freezes very often might lead to your death, you have to constantly attack enemies to stunlock them
- Life degen sometimes can be annoying.
- Getting the rage stacks can take a while and your dmg drops a lot without them.
- Can't do phys reflect maps.


The budget

Minimal budget less 1ex, while recommended budget 5-10ex. But it's a very fast and smooth farmer, so it shouldn't be that hard to at least get few exalts.
The bare minimum you need is Hegemony's Era with "ok" rolls (few chaos), 5-6 link body armor with decent life (30-130c), fill the rest of equipment with any rares to cap resists, some life and damage if you're lucky... and that's it. You're good enough to farm white/yellow maps and keep upgrading your gear.
You also need a single "physical attack damage leeched as mana" mod on ring/gloves/amulet or jewel. Just one of any amount is enough.


Mechanics and general advices for offense/defense


The offense:
Berserker ascendancy and staff nodes give you good enough damage to kill 99% stuff in this game.
But the things are different for that 1% - map bosses, Legion, 4x essence rare mobs, etc. For them you might want to press your "Now you all die." button - the Berserk buff.
With full rage bar, potions up and Berserk buff you just obliterate everything on screen. For example in my gear Shaper Guardians manage to pull out 1 attack, then they're dead. Shaper gets 1 rotation of his skills, then the phase's over.
But that comes with the great cost - Berserk consumes your precious rage stacks and without them your damage drops a lot. That's why should:
-Be careful with wasting it against bosses with long animation phases. You don't want to stand there awkwardly staring at the untargetable boss and losing your stacks.
- You should leave few monsters packs alive before dealing with boss, in case you die and need those stacks back.

And of course remember to switch between Blood and Sand stance for tought bosses or large group fighting.


The defense:
Well the Berserker with his 0 defense nodes and 10% more damage taken doesn't make life any easier, but we use few defensive layers:
-The most important defensive layer one actually comes from our high physical damage and the nature of Sweep. You knock back all melee and stunlock 99% things in this game. Aside of high hp Guardians, Generals, etc. melee can't really touch you. So you have to quickly recognize dangerous ranged mobs on screen and jump there to kill or at least stunlock them.
- Decent life pool (6-7k) with life leech.
-Decent armor, Fortify, 5 Endurance Charges with Immortal Call.
-77/76/76 resists and immunity to Freeze or Ignite.
-You always have an option to swap Ancestral Protector for Decoy Totem.



The gear and gem links

The core item of this build. It has great synergy with Sweep, making it easy to get Power Charges. Start with cheap Hegemony's Era, later swap it for one with as high rolls as mine.
Eventually I'm going to 6-link it and put auras with Enlighten in it, so I can get higher level of Precision and still have some free mana.
It's nice idea to link Flesh and Stone to Maim for a bit more damage.

This armor cost me 5ex, but that's because I was min-maxing for that 7th link Maim (and -mana cost of skill, which you need for high 7-link skill cost). It might be cheaper to get -mana cost roll on the rings instead.
For farming, any 6-link armor with decent life will do.

Decent helmets with Sweep enchant are actually very cheap, I paid 3c for mine I think.
CWDT setup is pretty basic, you can use defensive curse instead. But higher damage leads to better stuns, to it's pretty defensive anyway.

Spiked gloves with decent life, resists, damage - how good they are depends on your budget.
Stone Golem to help with Degen, Ancestral Protector for damage boost, Blood Rage for Frency Charge generation.
Empower isn't needed, I put one in there cause I dropped it.

Boots with built-in Fortify for Leap Slam are nice to save up on gem slots.
Arctic Armour to counter Berserker's debuff, eventually I'll link it with Enlighten and the other auras in the staff.

Pretty cheap yet efficient amulet, helps with getting the int/dex needed for gear/gems.

Rings for HP, resists and mana leech if you didn't get it somewhere else. The more money you have to spend the more damage mods you can get here.

Great and pretty cheap belt for HP, damage and aliments immunity. Make sure your dexterity is higher than intelligence, because freeze immunity is great Quality of life bonus.
It can be replaced if you find REALLY good Stygian Vise + Abyss Jewel.

Pretty standard set of melee potions. Lion's Roar is a bit expensive (30-60c), so leave it until later.

If you farmed lots of currency and already have decent gear, buy Watcher's Eye with crit multi bonus while affected by Precision (~5ex).




Bandits, Ascendancies, Pantheon

Kill all bandits.

Take Crave the Slaughter, then Rite of Ruin, so you can get used to playing around Rage. Then take the final nodes in any order you prefer. It depends on your gear:
-Do you already have some crit bonuses to start build around it? Then take Flawless Savagery
-Do you have decent life pool already, but your damage starts lacking? Take Aspect of Carnage.

Pantheon :
-Soul of Ralakesh to help with the life degens.
-Sould of Lunaris to help with ranged mobs you missed.




leveling and the skill tree

Start with any skill you like. Sweep might feel awkward until you get decent attack speed, so you might want to stick for the other skills foe now. Save money for Hegemony's Era and 5-6 link armor. You should have enough once you finish 10 acts. If not, trade all your orbs for chaos or something.


Tree in browser:
https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAECAAHcAecJlg3NE3EUIBRNFVYWbxiRGjgb-hzEHM4dFCGQJKol3ycvK1At0i7tMfs1kjboOQ464TwtPT49ZD38QXJG4kd-Si5N41BHVw1YY1iuWK9Z816lXz9f0GVNZlRmnmhlbztyD3Kpdqx343gNeWh_44NfhL-E2YVSh2qMz49GkFWRzpJ9kw-Ub5ZslwiXeZhXm1GfPqQZplenbaelqW6plKyqrY2vp7GutfK8mryfvTa-p8AawQTCIsT2xq7G2Mlnz37SxdWL2L3ZYdyM4NjjauRR5c_qEOoY6wnvDvJF85v2SPcy-F_4ufpN-tL7i_xL_gr-VP6P_vk=?accountName=osesek&characterName=Sweeperker

Here's the PoB link again https://pastebin.com/Sx6qKMu0
This is my lvl94 tree. Just don't take all the jewels and endurance charge nodes I took, cause usually people aim for 90lvl.
Start with universal 2-handed nodes on the south-west, cause we don't know what weapon you find for leveling.
Then move towards the north and take the Staff nodes (Whirling Barrier, Counterweight, Smashing Strikes, Ophidian Aim), once you get Hegemony's Era.
Finally take the crit and aoe staff nodes in far north.
And take the "life pizza" node near the center at any point your prefer. It depends on the gear you find, do you rather need life or damage at this moment.

Last edited by osesek on Jun 30, 2019, 3:25:39 PM
Last bumped on Jul 7, 2019, 2:02:36 PM
Nice guide, this is a super fun build to play. If cyclone weren't completely busted it probably would get more attention haha.
Well yeah, let's be honest. Cyclone with some impale bonuses (without them it probably won't) will obviously do more damage. But I expect at least one of those things to get a nerf in the next patch, while this build should be safe.
Here's a quick comparision to Cyclone:

1) As mentioned, Cyclone will do more damage, once you charge up and stack those impales. There's a reason why everyone and his dog play Cyclone now.

2) Sweep is more about "pressing the button", gives you more control over your char. Cyclone about holding the button, I guess it might be smoother for some people.

3) Sweep is more defensive - easier stuns and built in knock back.

4) Sweep has great synergy with Hegemony's Era and easy Power Charge generation for crits. You probably want a different staff for Cyclone and more chance to crit bonuses on gear.

5) Sweep lab enchant is dirt cheep, Cyclone not really I guess. Same with 21/23 gem price.


Anyway it doesn't really take that much effort to transition from this build to some Cyclone staff. Quest refund points and some investment in gear should be enough.
Last edited by osesek on Jul 7, 2019, 4:38:11 AM
I switched from cyclone to this. Cyclone deserves its hype because it works so well(and impale is op) but I feel this is a more fun playstyle, you get the feeling of really beating the shit out of everything and doing it at breakneck speed.

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