[Semi-Updated to Ritual]Poison Blade Vortex Assassin In Depth Guide
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well hello! I am Hilavitkutin was top 2 Poison blade vortex player in Softcore Harvest! However I'm not playing Heist, I still wanted to update the guide.
This is my version of the poison blade vortex build with two cluster jewel setups. The guide will be in-depth. This guide tries to highlight the endgame options and budget options for trade and ssf alike. I have included videos of all of the major endgame content, that is not rng gated.Note that all the videos are from harvest league. Every Pob should be alright, even though they are from harvest. The only tree change is whispers of doom, which I would swap for growth and decay to skip +1 curse chest or to go tricurse. Pob for all trees, Aka the all purpose Pob with gear examples: https://pastebin.com/j9EADvhw
Acknowledgements
I also must acknowledge Gr0bbs, I stumbled upon his video on poison blade vortex around march, and his build was in a base for me to build on.
Additionally, LightyGaming for helping on readability and clarity for this guide. twitch YouTube Darichon for helping with clarity, levelling section and some ssf aspects. Special thx to Sidewinder for combining all the different Pob trees and adding gear + gem options! Credits for @ZeroFcuksGiven for digging up the dagger craft method from comments and improving it.  Pros: -Zoom -Zoom -Very quick mapper in tight layouts -Can do simulacrum wave 20 easily and do fully juiced 100% delirious maps -A very good boss killer when you have time to ramp poison -Easy to start with budget or in ssf -HH is stupid with the build Cons: -Sometimes too much zoom is too much zoom, so takes time to get used to -Hard to gear with two cluster jewels while having low budget -Strength is hard to balance -Cannot reliably use dash or flame dash as a main movement skill -Sirus A8 and uber elder needs practise to do reliably deathless -Open layouts can be annoying to clear  Mechanics
Blade vortex and poison applying rate
Blade vortex is amazing for applying fast poison stacks and vaal blade vortex is just sugar on top of it.
You can see the math behind the blade vortex hit rate here. Basically regular blade vortex hits seven and a half times in a second and vaal blade vortex hits for another seven and a half meaning on bosses we get 15 stacks per second so we need two and half seconds to apply 40 poisons, which is more than enough to kill most bosses on the spot.
Elusive
In this build we utilize the instant withering step on left click. This accomplishes 100% uptime for over 100% effective elusive buff. This is an interaction between the withering step gem and our ascendency node mistwalker.
Withering step reads: Removes existing Elusive before granting a new Elusive Buff when used AND Using a skill or losing the Elusive buff ends this skill's effects. Mistwalker gives us 50% chance to gain elusive buff on crit. The interaction here is that we use withering step on cooldown due it being on left click, applying a new elusive. Then we use a skill probably within the next one to two seconds. This removes our elusive, but our ascendancy reapplies it instantly. When withering step comes off cooldown, which is short due second wind, it removes our “bad” elusive and reapplies good elusive. This cycle keeps our elusive up with insane effectiveness. The cons of this set up are that dash skills are bad as main movement skills. This is due withering step sharing a cooldown with other blink skills. We counter this in two ways. Firstly, we mainly rely on high movement speed and whirling blades with good attack speed. Secondly, we have our dash linked to second wind. Withering step basically gives -1 charge to other blinks, so with second wind our dash has one charge. This is not a reliable movement and it is used for going over ledges instead.
Why wind dancer?
You are mostly attack and spell dodge capped with quartz flask, elusive and passive tree. Therefore 20% less damage taken is a good tool vs getting one shot.
On the topic is, 5 points worth it? for me yes. I went for level 100, so I wanted more defence layers and wind dancer and the two life nodes bellow it was worth it. If you want more damage, one might go for more damage, I skipped some good damage nodes for some defence.
Herald of agony vs Herald of Purity
For pure DPS numbers Herald of purity with comparable circle of guilt is better.
This means, however, that we need to get 10% poison chance from the tree, so we are at 100% poison chance without flasks. We would do this with by specking into Toxic trikes for two points. For the points we respect from Death and decay node which gives us three points. So to use the final point we respec the small node under hunter's gambit, which we pick up at lvl 100 with Thread of hope, and we use two points for Will of blades. I CHOSE AGAINST THIS. Not because it's bad, it is good, but because I value the life regen from death and decay highly. So I didn't find good other alternatives in dmg nodes to move around. Also this build has more than enough dps so I wanted to make other aspects of the build feel better, such as life regen, skill effect duration, double explosion for amazing clear.
Explode mechanics and poison
It is common knowledge that physical explosions and poisons go well together. This is due how explosions "prolif" or "spread" poison. there are two options for this build asenath’s gentle touch and explode chest.
Personally I would stack both as due the wordings they stack. But this leag not having harvest crafting, I think you can go with one explosion item. To note, from my own experience and testing, contrary to the wording, they do stack. This was tested in running 10 maps with only gloves, 10 maps with only chest, 10 maps with both + hexproof maps and finally 10 runs with both in non-hexproof maps. Firstly, you see the asenath’s explosion visuals with wearing both. In hexproof maps the visual is not present. Secondly, with both we have noticeable better explosion chain reactions. In conclusion I believe strongly that they do stack. If you disagree, I am open for constructive criticism and I’m willing to change my opinion upon proven to be in the wrong. Note that if you are doing only 1 explosion item, asentah's explosions do not feel as consistent as explosion chest, but the clear is still the same level.
Eldritch battery and feast of flesh from Diadem helmet
Eldritch battery swaps our energy shield into “mana”. Therefore, we can reserve 100% of our mana. Also, because we do not have any es leech or regen we rely on energy shield recharge which is better the more es we have. Feast of flesh skill diadem grants us is also helping us to refill our es. Note: at 300 es we can go oom if we zoom too much or map has less regen. At 500 es, we wont go oom, ever. Feast of flesh triggers automatically every five seconds granting us es and life per corpse consumed. However, because we explode most corpses it will be more or less inconsistent. It will trigger rather often still. When we have around 300 es this is very noticeable for our es refill. Note: The inconsistency will be worse after we have crusader chest, therefor, if you have 300ish es consider having one link desecrate to create corpses in maps. Additionally, desecrate is really good for bosses without corpses to refill life and es.
Defensive layers
This build has plenty of defensive layers.
For a start we go for higer life than most poison blade vortex builds and skip two amazing dps clusters: Doom cast and Dire torment. Other layers include, 75/65 dodge with tree, flasks and high effectiveness elusive. Fortify from whirling blades grants us 20% less damage taken from hits. Wind dancer gives us 20% less damage taken (including dots) if we are not hit recently. Maddening presence from impresence, gives enemies a debuff, so they have reduced action speed and deal 10% reduced damage. Aspect of the spider hinders and therefore, slows enemies. Temporal chains on hit slows enemies. We have 4,2% life regen from the tree and surging vitality regen every five seconds. Feast of flesh from diadem consumes corpses and grants us life and es. Enduring cry. flesh and stone for sandstance defence. life gain on spell hit ring, this is insanely good for delirium. Also if you are dying while mapping DO consider Mistwall as it would add maxblock layer to the build. High movement speed. In heist we also have the option to go tricurse and add enfeeble into the build instead of flesh and stone. Gearing This build can be done with a budget but has great potential to be scaled into the endgame. things to prioritise in gear are strength and resistance. This makes gearing easier.
Gear combos
This build has some gear “combos” which means you need few pieces at the same time for them to work.
Impresence + asenaths + curse chest or whispers of doom from tree: We need +1 curse from chest to use both curses at the same time. It is up for you to decide which piece you want to go first. I went asenath’s and then I got curse chest and impresence. Diadem + aspect of the spider: We need diadem to have the capacity to reserve mana for aspect. Resistance cap vs circle of nostalgia: We need quite a lot of resistances from our rare gear and clusters to be resistance capped or better to be elemental weakness capped with a circle of nostalgia.
Enchants
Helmet: For helmet the bis enchant is blade vortex duration. It makes all content feel better.
Secondary options are relevant enchants for blood rage, wither step, wither, etc. Gloves: There is glove enchants in this game? Boots: Bis “10% increased Movement Speed if you haven't been Hit Recently”. Secondary option is “16% increased Attack and Cast Speed if you've Killed Recently”. Belt: We have two options for belts. Enemies Maimed by you take 8% increased Damage Over Time. We get maim from blood stance if we get this enchant. Enemies Withered by you have -6% to all Resistances. “all resistances” includes chaos resistance, as it doesn’t mention “elemental resistances”. Gear
Helmet
Bis devouring diadem. This is quite self-explanatory as it allows as to run aspect of the spider and flesh and stone. note try to get a diadem with resistance or strength as it makes gearing easier. Budget: a rare helmet with life, strength and resistances. Also see the section about gem setups.
Weapons
There are two options here, one being offensive and other defensive.
1.Option is two cold iron points for +6 gem levels 2.Second is to go with 1 cold iron and a mistwall. Mistwall being the Bis shield for this build for defensive layers with block because we are not getting hit due high dodge. Very budget for our ssf bois: Use one obliteration wands for those sweet explosions. Also use a shield to get access to shield charge for movement skill and fortify. Upgrade immediately. Before explosions Run one cold iron and a bino’s for poison proliferation, swap to second Cold iron or Mistwall after getting explosions from asenath’s or chest. Endgame corruptions: BiS: Increased damage over time Due losing harvest crafting, use one cold iron with power charge on crit. The very high budget would use double corrupted cold iron with both power charge on crit and damage over time corruption. Very very high budget
dagger craft
1. +1 Spell Skill Gem
Orb of Aleration till you hit +1 Spell Skill Gem Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) 2. Fracture +1 Spell Skill Gem Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) 3. Increased Damage with Poison Fossil craft for “Increased Damage with Poison” with Corroded and Metallic Fossils Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Suffix Increased Damage with Poison 4. Craft Cannot roll caster Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Suffix Increased Damage with Poison (Chaos) Suffix Cannot Roll Caster Global Critical Strike Multiplier Aug Critical OR Rem Add Critical till you hit Global Critical Strike Multiplier Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Suffix Increased Damage with Poison (Chaos) Suffix Global Critical Strike Multiplier (Critical) Suffix Cannot Roll Caster 5. Cannot Roll Caster to Cannot Roll Attack Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Suffix Increased Damage with Poison (Chaos) Suffix Global Critical Strike Multiplier (Critical) Suffix Cannot Roll Attack Mod 6. +1 Physical Spell Skill Gem Aug Physical OR Rem/Add Physical until you hit +1 Physical Spell Skill Gem Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Prefix +1 Physical Spell Skill Gem (Physical, Caster) Suffix Increased Damage with Poison (Chaos) Suffix Global Critical Strike Multiplier (Critical) Suffix Cannot Roll Attack Mod 7. Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier Aug Chaos OR Rem Chaos Add Chaos until you hit Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier You might remove Increased Damage with Poison. If you do then you’ll have to Add/Remove Chaos until you either get Chaos Damage Over Time or Increased Damage with Poison. If you hit Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier then craft Prefix Cannot Be Changed and add/rem Chaos till you hit Increased Damage with Poison. OR If you hit Increased Damage with Poison then continue with Step 7 by Add/Rem Chaos till you hit Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Prefix +1 Physical Spell Skill Gem (Physical, Caster) Prefix Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier (Chaos) Suffix Increased Damage with Poison (Chaos) Suffix Global Critical Strike Multiplier (Critical) Suffix Cannot Roll Attack Mod 8. Remove Cannot Attack Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Prefix +1 Physical Spell Skill Gem (Physical, Caster) Prefix Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier (Chaos) Suffix Increased Damage with Poison (Chaos) Suffix Global Critical Strike Multiplier (Critical) 9. Increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells Aug Caster OR Rem/Add Caster till you hit Increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells. You might remove +1 Physical Spell Skill Gem! If you do a. Remove the new Caster mod b. Craft on Cannot roll attack c. Redo Step 7 d. After you hit +1 Physical Spell skill get again. Start back on Step 9 Current State Prefix +1 Spell Skill Gem (Caster) Prefix +1 Physical Spell Skill Gem (Physical, Caster) Prefix Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier (Chaos) Suffix Increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells Suffix Increased Damage with Poison (Chaos) Suffix Global Critical Strike Multiplier (Critical)
Body armour
For our chest slot the BiS mod is spell crit.
The other mod is either explosions if you want to have either double explosions or if you want to use headhunter + hands of the hightemplar with despair + temp chains. Note that u need to allocate whispers of doom if you go with explosion + spell crit. The second option is to go with spell crit + curse chest. With this you need to use asenath's. The pro's of this is that you could run tree curses or with two curses and good life regen from growth and decay nodes. Note: ES base will feel the best for EB, however, you can also go for assassin’s garb for movement speed implicit. Budget: Go for +1 curse chest with life and resistances. Very budget for our ssf bois: Kintsugi this, however, means skipping one curse and having explode elsewhere.
Crafting your endgame body armour with harvest
Step 1: Get yourself your preferred hunter base item level: 85 (or 86 for T1 life). I went for Vaal regalia for EB QoL.
Step 2: Perfect fossils until 30 quality, every 2% quality is 1 life from body armour enchant. Then chaos spam until you have +1 curse (1 hit in 100c) and no other influence mods. (In this order I forgot to quality twice, so I had to chaos spam +1 curse twice FeelsBadMan) Step 3: Acquire a chest with crusader explode mod and no other influence mods. On that note, in trade there are plenty of three physical chests in sale (explode, physical reflect, physical taken as lightning), If you buy one, make sure to use remove lightning so the chest has only one influence mod. Side note for ssf bois: how to make ssf explode chest? Get ilvl 85 crusader chest alt spam until you hit physical damage reflect. Regal into suffix. Now u have a chest with only 1 prefix which is physical reflect, now you can augment physical twice to hit 100% explode. Step 4: Awakener orb explode into hunter base. Pray you don’t hit mana. Step 5: Take a look at the result. Is the third prefix targetable? Yes, no worries we are winning. No? Boi, we gamble now, so next step is either annul the bad prefix or seed annul it with remove non-life add life. Brick? Go to step 1. Step 6: Now we take care of suffixes. Did we hit even one non-targetable suffix? Yes. Is there room? Yes, craft prefixes cannot be changed and scour. Alternatively, we can use the following seed crafts: remove non-cold and add new cold or non-fire and add new fire and hope to hit the non-targetable mod. No? If there is 1 targetable mod, annul it and proceed with the steps above. If you hit all targetable suffixes, seed annul them away. Step 7: Now we seed augment attack to hit attack crit and we augment + caster to hit spell crit. After that we augment pure crit to hit power charge on crit. Step 8: remove attack. Then we can remove + add / remove + augment caster until T1 spell crit. Step 9: Augment a resistance, remove + add / remove + augment until t1. Step 10: Now we can remove useless prefix and remove + add / remove + augment life until we hit T2-T1 life. Step 11: target divine and enchant with life quality or secondarily with strength quality.
Rings
For ring we want one resistance ring with high life. The other ring is for pure damage. The circle of nostalgia is our choice, go for chaos damage and herald of agony buff effect.
Divine circle of nostalgia for max stats and prioritising chaos dmg over buff effect. Note 1: get a cirle of nostalgia ONLY after your resistances are capped with one ring. Note 2: Resistance quality for the rare ring and stat quality for the circle of nostalgia as we need strength. Budget: Go for two resistance and life rings and get some strength on one or both of them. Endgame: Get life gain on spell hit on the rare ring. Get good implicits on your circle of nostalgia: life %, chaos damage, physical damage, crit multi or damage with ailments.
Crafting your endgame rare ring with harvest
Crafting your endgame ring with harvest:
Step 1: Get your preferred shaper/crusader base two-stone or prismatic ring item level: 84 Step 2: Chaos spam/fossil craft/seed life craft until you have a base with t1 life and workable other affixes. That means you must have blocked prefixes so make sure you have in prefixed physical damage to attacks, wed, energy shield or evasion rating which can be removed later. if you did not hit these mods you can seed augment them into the ring. Step 3: If your suffixes include non-removable modifiers such as stats you have two options. you can craft prefixes cannot be changed and wipe the suffixes or you can Gamble with remove non-cold/fire/lightning. BEWARE you can remove prefixes because there are elemental mods in prefixes, so wiping is safer. If your suffixes hit a combination resistances/ elemental dmg rolls, % increased fire dmg, for instance, you can target remove all non- resistance rolls. Step 4: From here if you have a clean ring with no suffixes we craft % damage of the elemental type we are targeting and seed augmenting the same elemental type. Hit t1 res? Yes? Move to the next res with same steps. No? Remove craft! Then remove + add / remove + augment with the bench craft and craft removal in between until t1. Step 5: Redo the same steps for the second resistance. Keep in mind that for the first two resistances we can utilize the change resistance into other resistance for making effective use for the seed crafts you have saved. Step 6: For third resistance the only option we can augment the last elemental type into the ring and then remove + add / remove + augment until we hit t1 res. Alternatively, you can craft you preferred res from the crafting bench, but then we can’t craft % damage or Elreon -mana cost on the ring. Step 7: Now we should have a base with t1 life, 3 t1 resistances and 2 targetable bad prefixes. Remove defence mod, physical mod or attack mod, until you have only t1 life left as a prefix. Life gain on hit is a caster mod so we can augment caster mod and then remove + add / remove + augment until t1 life gained on spell hit. For the last prefix craft % damage or Elreon -mana cost mod from the crafting bench. Step 8: Lastly divine with seeds until max rolls.
Amulet
Despair Impresence
Good life gives, free despair, damage over time and added chaos dmg. Additionally, maddening presence buff granting less dmg and action speed for enemies is, especially combined with temporal chains, a good addition to the defensive layers of this build. We catalyst the amulet for stats until we have enough strength, then we swap to life catalysts. Budget: Rare amulet with life and resistances. However, in this case, you don’t get to run despair. For our ssf bois: Use Retaliation Charm it gives damage and strength and drops often. The blind won’t affect us much apart from getting fortify. You can also consider good rare. Other options: A rare amulet with +2 to bv, that is +1 to phys and +1 to dex gems. This is a pure dps amulet.Also this amulet needs despair as a corruption from gloves.
Gloves
Asenath’s gentle touch silk gloves is my choice.
They give us temporal chains on hit, explosions and they have relatively high life. Budget: Pick asenath’s or explode chest which one is cheaper for you. If you pick chest, get temporal chains on hit on some other decent rare or unique, hands of the high templar for instance. For our ssf bois: you can either farm the timeless battle to get a pair of these gloves or you can vaal decent life gloves until you hit temporal chains on hit or skip the second curse altogether. Other unique options for ssf include Fenumus' Weave Fenumus' Weave Carnal Mitts. Remember when not having explosions from gloves you must go for explode chest. Very budget ssf bois: Go for obliteration wand and shield and skip temporal chains. Endgame corruptions: I went for % life and attack speed for defence and clear speed. However, you can go for plenty of other corruptions such as +1 frenzy charge, spell crit etc. Note: If you hit despair on hit you can consider rare endgame amulet.
Boots
The BiS mod in boots is the hunter mod” poisons you inflict deal damage faster”.
This build has so much damage, but it is slow poison damage, so the faster mod is basically more multiplier for us. However, tailwind is strong for clear if you enjoy that more. Therefore, we go for high life, movement speed + onslaught craft and faster poisons. Additionally, ES base is preferred for EB QoL. Harvest is back! Tailwind no longer has crit tag, so we want both tailwind+posion, then we need to start the craft with tailwind mod. ideally tailwind + high ms -> rem add chaos for t1 poison mod. --> add a res of your choice -> life crafts until t1 flat life -> craft cannot be frozen.
Belt
Stygian vise belt is our best option.
Go for high life, two high resistances and aspect of the spider. If you have open prefix craft % increased damage. Catalyst for resistances. Note the gear combos mentioned above. Budget: Get as much life and resistance + aspect as you can get. Endgame: (link) Hunter stygian with %life and % chaos damage. Swap resistance quality to life quality when you have enough resistances. HH. HH is stupid good. The build needs some tweaks to use hh, but I think if you can afford a hh you know how you would tweak it. Jewels
Abyssal jewel
We want life and resistances. Preferable 40 resistance jewel before gear allows it to be dropped to 30 (10 all resistance)
Note: upgrade to onslaught jewel after getting endgame 35 or 30 movement speed boots. Note: After we have freeze immunity boots and no-longer have onslaught from the movement speed + onslaught craft get a life, resistance + onslaught jewel. Crafting tip: On searching eye and murderous jewels we can target onslaught as they have two caster modifiers: onslaught and cast speed on crit. Caster fossils are nice way to force them.
Thread of Hope
We want a “very large” thread of hope to socket into ranger jewel socket, get appropriate -all res for your resistances.
We pick the following nodes with the jewel: Swift Venoms, Heart of Oak and Revenge of the hunted. Note: on level 100 you can pick up the small node under Hunter’s Gambit for 6% faster poison damage, as it is the best single non-notable point for damage. Budget: there is none. Endgame: Corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you
Watcher's Eye
For watcher’s eye we go for “Damaging ailments you inflict deal damage 15 % faster while affected by malevolence”.
This is the Bis mod because we have so much poison damage, but it is gated behind the duration. Dealing damage faster is more multiplier for us. Budget: Only faster mod Endgame: We add precision crit multi to the jewel. Another option is “damage overtime multiplier while affected by malevolence”. I didn’t go for that as I didn’t feel getting it due to its insane price. The dream is all three mentioned mods. Due to nerf on precision crit multi weather eye, consider double malevolence jewel this leag, if you have the budget. Otherwise losing 20% crit multi is not that bad.
Cluster jewels
This build utilizes two large clusters in the very endgame, due to this we want 8-passive large clusters and 4- or 5-passive mediums.
I will go over them and give crafting advice when possible. Additionally, this build gets a lot of strength and resistances from clusters.
Large Clusters (Chaos damage) 8-passives
The First cluster the most important cluster.
In this cluster we want three notables, Wicked pall, Grim oath, and Overwhelming malice. Overwhelming malice is easily the biggest damage notable for us. It gives us 100% uptime unholy might. Wicked pall is for skill effect duration, we want to stack it as much as we can. Therefore, it will be present in every jewel it can roll into. Grim Oath is amazing damage, it scales out poison and our explosions. For budget prioritize the nodes as follows malice>wicked pall> grim oath Crafting: alt spam wicked + malice -->harvest phys slam grimm Note: Grim oath pushes overwhelming malice to the back of the cluster, so If you are levelling consider leaving second augment for a grim oath for later. Second cluster: We want Wicked pall, Grim oath, and Touch of cruelty. Touch of cruelty’s second line “Enemies hindered by you take 10% increased chaos damage” is a more multiplier and we can hinder with aspect and wither totems. However, I would still prioritise grim oath and wicked pall. We can have one resistance on every large cluster, target them with seed augments as there are no other elemental modifiers. However, do not use remove non-modifiers as we don't want to lose our grim oath.
Medium clusters (chaos dot multi) 4- or 5-passives
We want Wicked pall and Wasting affliction on every medium we have.
They are not really targetable so happy chaos spamming. Althouhg to note, wasting no longer has chaos tag, so one could roll wasting and chaos rem-add for wicked. These are not easy to selfcraft so you can use non-optimal jewels as well. If you need dmg use mediums with wasting + other notable, or if you have dmg and want quality of life go for wicked pall + other notable. These notables are very good, but not my picks. -heamorrage -circling oblivion
Small clusters (life) 3-passives
We want 1 cluster with Surging vitality for good regen. The other notable we want is Fettle.
When upgrading to two large clusters we add two more Fettles into the build. Important: We want as much strength and resistances from our life clusters as possible. We need to hit the minimum 111 strength for level 20 fortify. This makes the stress of getting good life clusters quite the burden.
Flasks
In general, the two flasks we always want to run are Coralito’s Signature Diamond flask and Atziri’s Promise. Both are amazing damage flasks for our build.
The former giving us poison duration and perfect agony keystone, so our crit multi transforms to damage overtime multiplier. The latter, Aziri’s promise gives us a huge amount of base chaos damage to scale poison. Another stable flask is curse immunity Quartz flask. Phasing is amazing while diving into packs and the attack and spell dodge it gives basically caps us on dodge. Curse immunity is very important in my opinion, as we are not elemental weakness capped. For Flasks we have two set-ups depending on our immunities and one set-up for bossing. Setup 1:No antifreeze boots + no corrupting blood jewel. Seething + freeze life flask, bleed quicksilver, Coralito’s Signature Diamond flask, curse immunity quartz and Aziri’s Promise. Setup 2: With freeze + corrupted blood immunity. Seething bleed life flask, alchemist quicksilver flask of adrenaline, Coralito’s Signature Diamond flask, curse immunity quartz and Aziri’s Promise. Endgame, not budget: We swap Aziri’s promise for bottled faith. Bottled faith is the BiS flask of the game, we enjoy every stat it gives, regen, base crit and the more damage multiplier. (Increase damage enemies take is a more multiplier effectively) Bossing (Sirus A8, uber elder, Ahuatitli, Krugal, Aul, Shaper): Swap Quartz for second life or another appropriate utility flask. The bosses above if you have the bottled faith: Swap Quartz for Atziri’s promise instead.
MY semi-endgame GEAR AND PoB in Harvest (the final harvest gear is in the 1st comment)
All purpose Pob: https://pastebin.com/j9EADvhw Gems
Vaal blade vortex-body armour
Vaal bv linked to void manipulation, unbound ailments, unleash, deadly ailments and vile toxins. Upgrade appropriate gems to awakened versions when possible. Prioritise lvl 21 vaal blade vortex, quality is AOE so it’s purely QoL with a bit of safety. Note: For 5L option we drop void manipulation.
Wither-weapon
Wither, spell totem and multiple totems
Whirling blades-weapon
Whirling blades, faster attacks and fortify. Note: Prioritise quality on whirling blades and faster attacks for more attack speed.
Auras-helmet
Malevolence, herald of agony, flesh and stone and level 3 enlighten. NOTE 1: Before we use Diadem, we run only malevolence and herald of agony. Note 2: Prioritise level 21 malevolence. We use flesh and stone for the sand stance’s defensive layers. Note 3: you don’t need level 4 enlighten, it gives us only few levels on our precision.
Gloves-Misc
Despair, blasphemy, blood rage and precision level 1. Upgrade blasphemy to the awakened gem when possible.
Movement skills - Boots
Second wind-withering step, dash and enduring cry level 13 (or what level your strength allows). NOTE: This exact set-up is the only way to run other blink skills during maps. This is due withering step sharing a cooldown with blink skills. So, in effect, while mapping all of our other blinks have -1 charge. So you need second wind on dash to have one charge. Even so, it is not reliable, so it is mainly for ledges. Other options to have to go over ledges are flame dash and charged dash, the latter being the most reliable. Flame dash without good cast speed is not worth it to my opinion, compared to dash. Note 2: If you have under 300 energy shield or you feel you run out of energy shield “mana” have a desecrate gem instead of dash to utilize feast of flesh from diadem to keep your energy shield going. Very good in less regen maps. Note 3: See skill bar swaps for endgame bosses in boss section. Mapping Min-Maxed build can do all map mods and all mapping content the game has to offer including simulacrum wave 20 and 100% delirious full juice maps.
Annoying mods
Poison avoidance – This mod is pain, personally I reroll it. It basically cuts your dps to under half, but once we have too much dmg the map mod is bad but never a brick.
Physical reflect – With good crit chance (assassin ascendancy gives reflect immunity for crits) and reflect pantheon is doable but annoying. Consider sextants. Less regen - This mod affects energy shield recharge so without 500ish ES pool you will go oom. No regen – Not as bad as it won’t affect energy shield recharge rate but beware of blood rage + map degeneration mods like burning ground (consider pantheon). Less dodge and -max resistances are the rippy mods so consider rerolling if you want to level. Hexproof – If you are using only asenath’s reroll or swap to bino’s to have poison proliferation. If you have explode chest clear is a bit worse but still good. Bossing We can do every major boss in the game. For normal bosses, just pop Vaal Blade vortex and the boss is already dead. Skill bar swaps are disclosed in shaper, Uber elder and Sirus A8 section.
Details on certain bosses
Conquerors
Charge 10 blade vortex stacks, set-up three wither totems and pop vaal blade vortex and flasks. AFK at their feet, the boss is dead before the second voice line. Note 1: if the boss is not dead dodge one attack and go back to dps. Also, get more dps. Note 2: Does not work with Drox due channelling phase, don’t pop vaal blade before he phases, then pop it when he starts channelling and he will die before having a chance to do nothing else.
Shaper Guardians
Chicken nugget, see conqueror set-up.
Minotaur, see conqueror set-up. Hydra, wait for the second phase and pop cooldowns there, dead in seconds. Chimaera, phase to phase pop flasks and pop vaal blade vortex in the last phase. Note: be aware of the smoke phase as it is the rippiest with bad map mods.
Normal Elder
Is this even a real fight?
Delve bosses
Ahuatotli, the Blind: just stay close pop flasks when needed should be easy. Kurgal, the Blackblooded: phase one is easy, stay close and run away when he does the laser. Phase two, stay close dps hard and dodge the big laser with going over him to his behind. Aul, the Crystal King: Just. Git. Gut. Purely mechanical fight with the only rng in area mods. Note: if you have bottled faith consider making same flask swaps as for the other major bosses.
Cortex
This fight has two bosses, then an add phase and then again two bosses.
For the first bosses of each phase pop flasks once and stay close until it starts to spin, then go away. Staying close deals damage to you. For the second boss pop vaal blade vortex and kill the boss as fast as you can, which is fast, very fast. Note: If you have bottled faith consider making the same flask swaps as for the other major bosses.
SHAPER, UBER ELDER, SIRUS A8
Here we are going to have some skill bar changes. These fights need some mechanical prowess and practise to do reliable deathless. Also, Enduring cry is OP.
Due to these fights being more Dodge with position fights we are going to take out withering step from our left click and just use the normal “move only” skill. Additionally, we take whirling blades out of our bar and use dash only. This gives us a smoother endgame boss experience with better movement dodging. Anyways ALL these fights can be done deathless easily with some practice. The main thing to get used is to not recast blade vortex too often. Instead, have faith in the very long skill effect duration. This would also be the main reason to go oom during a major boss fight. If you see yourself going oom anyways consider swapping whirling blades for the desecrate gem to have corpses for the feast of flesh.
Tips for Sirus A8
Flask effect seed craft is very good with aziri’s promise and bottled faith.
Otherwise, speck into Soul of Solaris pantheon. Try to keep enduring charges up but prioritise dodging over keeping charges. Have voice lines volume up, the fight has a lot of voice cues. (DIE!, everlasting fire, feel the thrill of the..) Try not to be hit by random meteors and take your time in between phases so you have safe re-enter into a new phase. For the first 2-3 phases, set-up wither totems and 10 blade vortex stacks while he is descending. Pop flasks once and run circles around him, he will be phased in no time. Last phase: this is the hard cake. We have two options here, high risk and low risk. For this phase, you have 100% vaal blade vortex up In high-risk scenario we can gamble if Sirus gives us 3-4 seconds of dps time right after he descends. So, we set-up totems, pop flask and vaal blade vortex when he comes down. If he does give us the 3 seconds we need, he is basically dead, and the fight is over. For low-risk scenario we can wait with vaal blade vortex and wait for the laser charge phase. Just do one round of flasks at the start if you have another round left, otherwise, save flasks. We know this phase starts from the voice line “Everlasting fire! “, we find the real Sirus and pop all cooldowns here and he will be dead in most scenarios. Note: As you are very close to Sirus beware of the spinning laser as it will usually tag you if you are on top of Sirus. For fuck ups in the last phase keep these in mind, voice cue “DIE!” Just go around him or horizontally/vertically from his position so his following beam won hit you, but never go straight towards him. “Everlasting fire!” means he will summon four clones, one of being real one and that can be damaged. Find him and do dps. “Feel the thrill of the...” he will summon several clones and will fire a death laser of death just after the “the” cue. You can listen from which direction he is speaking and just dash right before the “the” cue horizontally/vertically and it will not hit you. Also, remember to dodge the laser in the centre, it applies a debuff and if Sirus hits you while having it your action speed will be reduced to minimal. Passive trees
Anoints
We anoint dirty techniques for damage over time multiplier and faster poison damage.
For leveling (and for the time before we have real skill effect duration clusters) we anoint Potency of Will for skill effect duration.
Bandits
passive points all the way.
Ascendancy
Assassin
Normal lab: Noxious strike Cruel lab: Toxic delivery Merciless lab: Mistwalker Uber lab: Opportunistic
Pantheon
Major Gods:
Brine king if you feel you are getting stunned Lunaris for mapping Solaris for bossing Lesser gods: Upgraded Garukhan for movement speed Yugul for reflect maps and with the upgrade for Uber elder
Leveling tree
Pastebin includes tree before ascendency and one tree for each lab.
https://pastebin.com/LAYX0jRh Note: take more life/stat nodes as you need them and respect later.
Endgame tree with one cluster jewel setup: level 93 and 96
https://pastebin.com/PmG7m9e1
Notes: Your level might need to be higher; trees include a very large thread of hope, one 8-passive cluster and two 4-passive mediums. Note 2: Other included cluster DO not have other stats besides nodes, adjust your jewels to hit attribute requirements and resistance cap.
Endgame tree with two cluster jewel setup: level 94, 96 and 99
https://pastebin.com/sB17uXNe
Notes: Your level might need to be higher; trees include a very large thread of hope, two 8-passive large clusters and four 4-passive medium clusters. Note 2: Other included cluster DO not have other stats besides nodes, adjust your jewels to hit attribute requirements and resistance cap.
Videos
Standard Toxic Sewer map
Veritania kill Drox kill Minotaur kill Shaper kill Uber elder Sirus A8 100% delirius map warning: a laggy video, 100% deli is somewhat laggy for me but it has greater impact on the record. Some info on the map: t15 canyon for good layout, beyond, last conqueror prock. Used zana nemesis, alva, 4 good sextants, some prophesies and 4 scarabs. The video has one death early as I got confused on kosis teleport and ran into an explosion. Sirus a8 meme dps warrior kill the dps is stupid and I didn't even swap any passives around, just a neck,ring and glove swap. Also, swapped aspect of the spider to the herald of purity, so i didn't need passive swaps five way battle with hh and resetter We did some mistakes in this run, I greed some bosses and some resets were not in time, so the loots were on the poor side. However, it kinda shows how the 5way goes. Not having a HH does make it harder to reach 5 rows of loot, but if you learn how much your poison does (I'm still not sure :D) it's doable. HH mainly gives you more loot from rares anyway so it doesn't increase jewel/Uniq drops by a large margin. Last edited by hilavitkutin123456 on Feb 4, 2021, 11:42:41 AM Last bumped on May 13, 2021, 4:21:27 AM
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I will be adding some videos during this week
edit: videos on most of the content are up. I will work on doing Sirus A8 video and uber elder video during the weekend. Edit 2: All of the videos that I've planned are up, If you want a video of specific content pm me or request here. Edit 3: added five way battle video. Edit 4: Im out of room in the thread so I'll a bit more here! I have updated my gear to extremely high budget.
Harvest very endgame insane budget gear
Some notes: Yes the dmg is insane. You need lvl 4 enlighten to run precision at all due to the new daggers. My daggers are around 10% better per dagger than inc dmg over time corrupted cold irons. You need to make abyssal boots to have onslaught jewel with hh. New notes: I'm still on hiatus from poe, and not playing ritual. I readded harvest crafting sections and did some checking on tags. If u spot an error let me know! Last edited by hilavitkutin123456 on Feb 4, 2021, 11:44:25 AM
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very detailed guide. i'm considering a bv character for my next char.
can you elaborate a bit about the differences between fire herald of ash bv and the poison variant. why go poison over hoa? |
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Amazing guide! The detailed crafting process is wonderful. Just a question, do you recommend using a Cast when damage taken setup? I’m level 89 right now and i’m using one with immortal call, it seens to help me sometimes
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" I havent personally played the fire variant, but from what I've seen the difference is mostly in the "feeling" and the cost. With "feel" i mean the fire variant has consistent dmg and you feel each blade to do dmg. The poison variant doesnt hit hard, the dmg ramps up to same or higher numbers but you cant "feel" a DOT. I imagine that starting the fire variant needs more investment than poison. However both can be scaled into insane dmg and can scale explosions, former to fire and latter to chaos. I go poison because I enjoy dots and I like having 50 milj sirus dps :) |
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" I was planning on doing CwDT setup, but in the end found myself socket starved. Additionally I found enduring cry to be too good to pass. If you want to have CwDT setup do it over enduring cry. AFter that it's your preference between immortal call and steel skin. |
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To craft a +1 curse chest consider instead of chaos spamming, this: https://www.craftofexile.com/?b=45&m=fossil&f=|12|10|5|&i=|5|&ob=both&v=d&a=e&l=a&lg=3&bp=y&as=0&bld={}&ggt=|5|4|&ccp={}
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" This is a nice one, I will add this and credit you :) |
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" I've played both builds. I have played the fire one a bit longer so far. From what I can say right now, Fire is more direct, like OP said. The poison one has the ramp up, which makes bossing a little bit more dangerous. Fire is(was) harder to gear with 2 unique rings and a lot of expensive items. But thats maybe easier with harvest crafting, idk. This build here can be extremly costly as well. What I like more about the poison variant is that its a much faster mapper. Bossing is insane with both versions, but the poison version is much faster due to the ascendancy and several nodes/gearing options Last edited by TheUnseenReaper on Jul 16, 2020, 4:44:50 PM
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How would this build fair as a league starter?
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