[3.15] Strength Stacking Slammer. Blast through the game from start to finish.
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Updated for 3.15 Expedition league. Please read the 3.15 changes. As always feel free to ask any questions in-game or on Discord.
Introduction Hello and welcome to my build guide. This is a Earthshatter Berserker, stacking strength and life to utilize the new Bloodthirst support. The guide was originally written with Ground Slam in mind but I recommend Earthshatter as the superior choice. In addition to that you can play it as any Duelist/Marauder ascendancy except for Chieftain because we scale pure physical with Impale. With the current endgame setup we reach about 10k life aswell as 15-20mil shaper DPS. The build is absurdly tanky, being able to facetank more or less everything in the game. TWITCH https://www.twitch.tv/dexyn159 YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbKKc5EzMwM&t=3s 3.15 changes
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NEW POB: https://pastebin.com/GxBvHg7n
Slam skills probably got the biggest nerf in the game. In addition to all support gems and flasks getting dumpstered, we also lost Seismic Cry. The build is still incredibly strong and have enough damage to tear through everything in the game. There is no noteworthy change to the build, you can however choose to ditch Seismic Cry and go for Enduring Cry instead and respec Vaal Pact for Endurance charges and life regen. The only change I've done to the skill tree is to remove all Fortify effect nodes as they are to inefficient now in favour of more life nodes. Path of Building
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Cheap version:https://pastebin.com/03Pd5Cyz
Expensive version https://pastebin.com/GxBvHg7n The cheap version cost me around 2ex total and is perfectly fine for blasting through the atlas all the way to Awakener 8. The expensive version is what I'm currently playing and it cost me around 20-25ex and is capable of deleting everything in the game with the sole exception of Uber Atziri, because she reflects our damage. Pros and Cons
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Pros
+ Can facetank almost everything (so far) + Cheap to get going + Active/Fun playstyle + League start and SSF viable + Very easy to get tons of damage Cons - Slam builds are somewhat slow - Have to change low life setup for lab Levelling
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Despite this build being a strength stacking staff user, we dont need a specific weapon until we get Pillar of the Caged God. Simply use wichever 2-hander you find with the highest damage or craft one yourself using the vendor recipe with Blacksmith Whetstone+Rustic Sash+Weapon of choice. Typically 2-hand axes will have the highest damage so go ahead and use those.
On the rest of your gear simply pick up life and make sure your fire/cold/lightning resistances are as close to or above 75%. We also dont start stacking strength until we hit maps so we will mostly focus on life, warcries and generic damage while levelling. Gem Links
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Act 1
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We start using Ground Slam as soon as we get to town. Link it with Chance to Bleed and with a 3-link also Ruthless.
We also pick up Blood&Sand, Molten Shell aswell as our first 2 warcries, Enduring Cry and Intimidating Cry. At the end of Act 1 you can either choose to start playing Earthshatter or stick to Ground Slam. Both are perfectly fine for all content in the game.
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We only need 2 gems for our build here. Replace Chance to Bleed with Melee Physical Damage and pick up Seismic Cry. Keep Chance to Bleed in your inventory in case you find a 4-link before Act 4.
You can also pick up Herald of Purity here as a placeholder for our final setup.
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Here we get our Ancestral Warchief totem for a big damage boost. If you have room for it pick up Punishment and use it on tougher enemies.
Also pick up Pride and Petrified Blood but dont start using them yet.
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The only gem we care about here is Brutality. If you had a 4-link from before, replace Chance to Bleed. If you are unlucky and only have a 3-link use Ground Slam-Melee Physical Damage-Brutality.
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We dont get any new gems here but we do get the jewel Rapid Expansion that makes Ground Slam wider and generate endurance charges.
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Here we will want to do Lily's quest to unlock her gem vendor. We buy the remaining gems for our core setup here.
At this point your skills should be: Ground Slam-Brutality-Pulverise-Fortify and Impale as 5th link Blood&Sand-Herald of Purity-Dread Banner Ancestral Warchief-Smoke Mine or Dash Seismic Cry-Intimidating Cry-Enduring Cry-Second Wind Molten Shell-Punishment-Cast when Damage Taken Make sure the required level of your Molten Shell and Punishment does not exceed the trigger on Cast when Damage Taken. In our final setup we want Molten Shell at lvl 13, Punishment at lvl 9 and Cast when Damage Taken at lvl 6. You stop them levelling by right clicking on them when they level up. If you by mistake levelled them to high already you can always buy new ones from Lily. These are all the gems you will need until you hit maps. After that you should get Pillar of the Caged God and start strength stacking with the low life setup. Skill tree: https://pastebin.com/SzXHf10C During Step 1 we will simply grab some life and generic damage while heading up to Resolute Technique. In Step 2 we grab more life while heading towards Measured Fury for a huge damage boost on our warcries. Make sure you grab all 3 warcry gems ASAP. This is also a good time to finish your first ascendancy, pick War Bringer as your first point. Step 3 we head upwards to Scion life wheel and picking up some damage aswell as warcry speed along the way. You can do your second labyrinth here and pick up Defy Pain. Very important that you also have Risk Awareness on tree as it will reduce the reflected damage you take from Defy Pain when it triggers. Soul of Yugul pantheon also helps with this, you get it from the skill point quest in High Gardens. In Step 4 we start picking up our Impale nodes and start using Dread Banner aswell as Impale support on our Ground Slam. Step 5 is where we will start the respec to strength stacking. Simply remove Butchery and Martial Experience to pick up Utmost Might aswell as more life and fortify effect. We also start using the low life setup here so pick up Mortal Conviction on the tree, get Petrified Blood and socket Bloodthirst on your Ground Slam. After this you can continue following the rest of the guide and stack strength to the moon. Bandit+Pantheon
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Because we dont scale crit we kill all bandits to get +2 passive points.
Major Pantheon: Stuns are a pretty big issue early on so take Soul of the Brine King. I solved this by getting stun avoid enchant on boots and took Lunaris instead. Minor Pantheon: Currently using Yugul for the reduced reflected damage. Mechanics
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Warcries
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We are using Intimidating Cry and Seismic Cry to boost our damage. Make sure you keep these up at all times. Seismic Cry becomes stronger on consecutive hits. Finally we use Enduring Cry aswell to help out in rough situations to regenerate life.
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The main reason we are going low life is because of Bloodthirst support. It's an incredibly strong support gem that warrants an entire setup around it. Bloodthirst only works while on low life and gives us a tremendous amount of flat physical damage.
In order to stay at low life and not risk getting oneshot by anything that looks at us, we also use Petrified Blood. This negates 40% of incoming damage from hits while at low life and makes us take a slightly lower amount of the damage over 4 seconds. Gear
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Quite simply, stack life and strength wherever you can get it. Fill in the remaining stats to cap your resists. Skill Gems
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Earthshatter-Bloodthirst-Brutality-Pulverise-Impale-Fortify(We swap this for Melee Phys in lategame)
Molten Shell(lvl13)-Punishment(lvl9)-Cast when Damage Taken(lvl6)-Increased Duration Seismic Cry-Intimidating Cry-Enduring Cry-Second Wind Petrified Blood-Blood&Sand-Dread Banner-Enlighten Pride (Reserves no life because of Mortal Conviction) Ancestral Warchief-Berserk(optional)-Smoke Mine If you dont like Smoke Mine, Dash is perfectly fine to. Just don't use Leap Slam as it will eat your exerted attacks from the warcries. You can however sacrifice 1 skill point or a ring suffix to get "Warcries cannot Exert Travel Skills" Thanks for taking the time to read my guide. I'm open to feedback and suggestions and I'll try my best to answer any questions if anything is unclear. If you want to get in contact with me either PM me in-game or on Discord: Dex#0974 Last edited by Dex2644 on Jul 23, 2021, 4:44:18 AM Last bumped on Oct 2, 2021, 7:09:44 AM
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Thanks for the build guide. I'll try this as my league starter in SSF SC. Will see how it goes. Finding a Pillar of the Caged God might be hard, but who knows.
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PoB show that you have 82% of Unreserved Life but in a video you are at low life, over 50% reservation. How do you go to low life with this build?
Cheers. | |
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Looks simple and fun exactly what i was looking for, gonna try it out.
Great work and im waiting for update with end game gear :D | |
" I'll have a look at the pob when I get home but we get Pride for free from Mortal Conviction. We bypass the downside of only being able to use 1 aura by using reservation skills that arent considered auras. We use dread banner 10%, blood&sand 10% and petrified blood 35%. This totals out to 55% life reserved aswell as a free Pride aura. Petrified blood prevents us from ever exiting low life status with the exception of life flasks(wich we do not use) | |
" Makes sense! I didn't know that petrified blood reserves 35%. One thing to consider would be to somehow make reservation less than 50%, 49.999%. I think in that case your life leech will not be removed sice you are not considered to be at full life - aka petrified blood will cap it at 50% and there still will be that small gap between it and reservation. | |
" Yes that is correct. Im currently using an enlighten 3 to give me 2% unreserved above the threshold allowing the overleech. Ive been trying vaal pact for a bit but it doesnt feel worth it so far. | |
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Looks smooth what is the first ascendancy you take?
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" I went for War Bringer -> Defy Pain -> Crave the Slaughter -> Aspect of Carnage. You can take Aspect of Carnage whenever you want, can even be your first choice. You just have to be prepared to take more damage. | |
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Thanks, ive switch to anomalous ES and its really good.
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