Theorycrafting. Top life build

Hello everyone

I have made this thread to find out hypothetical best life build in "raw numbers" which could be as meaty as ES (in pure hp terms) and yet maintaining high offense :).

Ok, at first i will throw my approach with no cost restraints.
-most hp would be stacking most of life nodes in tree, but it would destroy damage output. This time will go for MoM.
-leeching. To keep up same leech mana rates as life with vaal pact, atziri's acuity would be required.
-not going out of mana. To get to this point build has to have a little more mana than minimum required, which with lets say 30% mom- mana pool would have to be over 44% of life pool. Here would help- grand spectrum jewels. Lets not go overbroad with 10+ cobalt grandspectrum, instead mix in viridian jewels to get back lost damage potential.
-atziri's acuity works only on crit build, so its a crit build.
-leech. We could go for commonly used warlords mark, but there is in south of the tree free mana and life leech clusters for attacks. so its attack build.
-viridian grand spectrum jewels grants increased elemental damage, so its elemental build

So far from requirements it looks like the build should be in right/south side of the tree having at least 10 jewel slots, having mom keystone, critting, and sufficient life and mana increases as well as damage increases. This is what i came up with-
poisoning voltaxic Scion probably with kaom's heart (141% life, 121% mana, 6 frenzy charges, dodge 10 jewel slots for grand spectrums, ~350% increased damage including jewels, 140% crit 85% multi, diamond flask needed)-
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAABAL68CGc7KLFbe26C5JM6A5amMpchkBG9J249AwTBfHvDGFYYPL6AqUiociHQ-ejS6ILHQYew2Cj6Hb63PqLZuJMzh_4Kg8zIFBzcA-7yRdi9PC31b-vujxo64TWSg19qjJrghTKmV_6PtfIWv0WdTeN4DeaBJpVTUsAay71h4qlubztVS1Ytd-OMNhSpAdyJ04TZcFLEuEd-KgvV-L02XfJlTQ5IvqfjhHXLwJwbyLe26mKnNM_dNj2NfvGKVYWdqkMxpctsjMMz2sFM_2KsWhouU3Tt1li0xdNvBS2PYMLseu8j0wW1byeNvxqNmmpRR9QjWyY31D7P51QwcX_77T-95iT93aj_3kt4OkI=

It might not work well, but what are your thoughts? do you have in mind other build which could overcome ES in both- hp and damage? :)

ps. lets just ignore current path finder blade vortex meta.

oh theorycrafting is always fun :) my attempt.

http://poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAUBAQKWBLMFQgj0C2EMUg0fD6sRDxEtE3EWbxa_FvMYPBhWGGoaOBzcHRQfGB_HIvQkiySqJjwmlScvKjgreCycLYsvnTLRNuk6WDrYOw08KDwtQYdBlkPIRUdPBFAwUEJR-1M1VUtVxlgHWK5boF6lXsBfKmHiZlRo8mpDbAttGXBSdFV4L3wOfEt8g3zlgpuDX4PMhMWFMoV7iFqJ04w2jmSPGo9GkFWSbpMnlnSaO5uhm7Wce5y-oS-iAKcIp1WouayYr2y2hrb6tz68VrzqvSe-isBUwGbDOsauzRbQ9dJ81abYvdte42rr7uw47SDtPO1h7-vwH_em99f53fno-tL-Cg==

Bandits: Oak, Kill, Alira

Equips: Pledge, Doedre's Damning corrupted with 6% Dmg taken gained as mana, Praxis also corrupted with 6% DTGM, KaomsHeart, Scold's Birdle, rare gloves/boots/leather belt/amulet
Jewel: 1 Spirited Response on node above witch start, other 6 jewels modded with %Life/crit multi or cast speed/all elemental res/spell or elemental crit multi

6L (pledge) Freeze Pulse - ICS - ICD - Empower/Lifeleech - Faster Casting/EleFocus (if boss cannot be frozen) - LMP/FasterProjectile(for boss)
4L cwdt - assmark - warlordmark or ProjWeakness/Tempchains - enfeeble
4L lv 1 cwdt - BV - PCoC - Ball lighting/firestorm
4L Rallying Cry - Faster Casting - Flame Dash - Summon Lit Golem/Decoytotem

Don't need mana leech because you have 30% Dmg taken to mana. I chose to wear scolds because it is easier to apply curses this way without having to get hit and to maintain power charges. And inquisitor base for the resistance ignorance.

If Boss can be ignited/chilled, can gem swap for alot more damage (same colors on staff, but the 4L will need rechrome unless you use flame dash for the burn which would feel awkward midfight imo, either that or you don't use hypothermia&vortex):

6L flame surge - ICS - ICD/FasterCasting/ConcAoe - Empower/Life Leech - Ele Focus - Hypothermia
4l lv 1cwdt - PCoC - Firestorm - Vortex (applies chil for hypothermia)

Just a random suggestion here for the voltaxic plan... could mind of the council be beneficial in this case? Since you're both crit and lightning (I cound chaos from voltaxic as lightning here), you might be able to replenish lots of mana. Maybe you could sacrifice 1 grand spectrum for volley fire and go with barrage as your main skill?
...I'm getting carried away here, anyways hope I could help a little bit.

If you're stacking a ton of life, wouldn't RF be a good choice?

"

Drahnier123 wrote:

If you're stacking a ton of life, wouldn't RF be a good choice?

Not really. RF only does a base of 50% of your combined life/ES, and is great when you can use Vulnerability.

However, it is much better to stack life and strength, obtaining some 1.8k strength. This translates to a minimum of 360% applicable damage for attacks and spells, and another 1% per 8 strength with Doon Cuebiyari. This also means another 900 base life, which is huge in its own right.

RF also requires a specific shield. Strength stacking doesn't.

If you want hp to be somewhat comparable to es, you are going to need to dip into damage reduction stats.

Phys damage reduction can get to around 50% if you are willing to spend some passives and dedicate an alt skill to applying fortify (or simply use the champion Ascendancy). Any combination of 5 endurance charges, another two, or the armor and phys reduction notable plus chaos golem can get you around 28% reduction, add that with 20% from fortify (since they're all reduced damage received mods), and your 7k hp looks a bit more like 14k versus physical hits.

Elemental resists are a bit more troublesome since there are very few sources of reduced damage received for them. You could possibly make due with triple purity auras I guess, though your overall reduction combined with Fortify will be less than 40%. Maybe a passive Enfeeble setup could possibly improve this closer to 50% against bosses (the only enemies you really need to worry about).

Chaos you could probably leave at 0% or maybe a little higher. Once you get over 6k hp it stops being a problem anyway.

"

Natharias wrote:

RF also requires a specific shield. Strength stacking doesn't.

It used to.. but then they made kaoms way.

Had a 10,500 life / 2,700 mana Firestorm chieftain in Perandus HC. Worked great. A little over 13k total hitpoints with MoM, which is in the solid ES build zone. No damage nodes on the passive tree and yet firestorm dealed decent damage - killed Wasteland Voll quickly and without special preparation, needed one cast (with echo) to clear trash except for some tanky-rolled maps.

Used cwdt - warlord's mark to sustain life + mana. The passive tree was basically 'get all the life nodes' plus some two-point mana nodes (Dynamo, Righteous Decree). Gear: Pledge of Hands + Kaom's Heart. All other items: go for high strength, life and mana rolls.

To cut the long story short, the concept works and it can work well but you have to pick a skill which deals a lot of damage with very little investment. Also, since you're going to be strength stacking anyway, Iron Will or the unique crusader gloves with the Iron Will passive are a natural choice. I suppose Iron Grip is the projectile variant.

Freezing pulse pledge build seems rather interesting and should be holding on its own while it's on lower budged side. Kinda curious how it would perform, althou it could have some more mitigations beside curses for further build perfection. I guess endurance charges could take this place from various sources.
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Mind of the council is in weird position. It could be another mana recovery source, but the highest issue with it is that it will refuse to work against tough bosses and precisely then it is most needed. As a secondary use, it could be used for enhancing MoM against lightning damage, probably mostly useful to deal with reflect i guess. Maybe worm jar could be the key here in taking advantage of 3% mana gain:)
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Speaking about various sources of damage mitigation, most of them besides es doesn't work well against elemental spells, but rather they can be godly against attacks (blind, enfeeble, tons of evasion or capped phys damage reduction). Spell dodge/block on other hand can mitigate spell damage, but it does fail miserably at times causing deaths (if there is rather low hp pool).
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13.2k hp pool looks impressive indeed. Wonder how it compares to sponge es in regards of sustaining hitpoints and how far it could go in the endgame content.

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Andrius319 wrote:

13.2k hp pool looks impressive indeed. Wonder how it compares to sponge es in regards of sustaining hitpoints and how far it could go in the endgame content.

Not as powerful, no VP instant leech and lower damage than top-end ES builds. More budget-friendly and solid from the earliest levels, on the other hand. Had between 1100 and 1300 life reg/sec + another 2k life and 500 mana/sec from warlord's mark and the Chieftain's 1% fire damage leech, so it could sustain a decent amount of DPS but not godlike by any means. Had to kite around stuff like the toughest perandus packs in t11+ maps. Those packs were sometimes ridiculously tough, to be fair. The main difference from ES builds is, they are more polarized. They are either incredibly powerful or incredibly bad. This one had a smooth and steady power progression curve, much more reasonable gear prices and generally felt more comfortable to play. Nevertheless, the only setting I'd think of doing a build like that is HC, it makes no sense in SC where clear speed is the most imortant factor by far.

Could theoretically do anything although I haven't risked him trying vs. stupid map mods, core and uber. I've seen marauder essence drain builds doing core/uber at around 60-70% of this build's raw defensive stats, so the potential to do anything in the game with proper tactics is definitely there.

Died at lvl 92 to Academy boss because I was extremely bored and wanted to see if I could facetank him, knowing full well it was probably a terrible idea. Free tip: Academy boss releases two types of tornadoes, one deals no damage, the other is released when you hit him and deals a lot of damage. Trying to facetank him with a build which hits a hundred times per second is a BAD idea :D. Anyway, he's tier 4 now so nowhere near as dangerous I suppose.