[3.8] Dominating Blow Juggernaut - SSF / Beginner / League Starter

About the build:
A simple and straightforward build that can achieve a good balance between offence and defence, with very little investement. Ideal for new players and SSF. It's playstyle is that of a hybrid melee summoner, relying on both your damage and your minions.

Pros:
-Very versatile and easy to gear
-Good defences and damage (2~4M+ boss dps)
-Uber Lab farmer
-Can do all map mods
-Can boost party members


Cons:
-Average Clear Speed


Detailed Info:
Spoiler

Why Juggernaut:
Dominating blow requires two things to work properly, good defences and decent attack speed for reliable summoning on bosses. With the changes in tree and gem's summoning chance, all ascendancies can now have a good summoning rate, while at the same time, it's easier to scale hit damage. Juggernaut has the benefit of getting all his defences from his ascendancy and focusing on damage from tree and gear. That way he can close the dps gap between other ascendancies that provide buffs to minions.

Pros and Cons:

-Gearing:
This build needs no uniques and has no specific requirements from rare gear to work properly. It has room for chaos resistance and can be played with any type or style of weapon you want to play with, since it dosen't specialize in any. Two-handed, Dual wielding, One hand and shield, are all viable.

If you play in SSF, the only thing that might need some effort to craft, is weapons with both minion damage and physical damage (fossil crafting). Ofcourse normal weapons with good physical damage/attack speed can work fine, since minion dps is much better after 3.8.

-Defences:
Apart from beeing a Jugger, further improvements can be made if you want more tankiness. With Resolute Technique, we can swap Undeniable for Unrelenting in ascendancy and can focus on fully defensive gear, since we can reach more than enough minion dps from tree alone. Bloodseeker, is now also an option, since we can reach good hit damage to benefit from life leech.

-Damage:
Dominating blow damage can vary depending on number of minions that are attacking and buffs they gain from mobs. The estimated dps is based on default attack with 9 normal sentinels up and attacking.

-Map Mods:
Physical reflect will obviously hurt, unless your own damage is not good enough. You can have a set of weapons with minion damage stats and low pDPS for those maps.


Trees and Leveling:
Spoiler

Tree:https://www.pathofexile.com/build/9pX4fw
PoB:https://pastebin.com/bSSTfe05

Expensive PoB:https://pastebin.com/eur9cpwr. "Unrealistic" gear to showcase a theoretical ceiling. Remove Circle of Guilt rings, for Dom Blow dps.

*PoB only calculates the first hit of Multistrike, so I have added the mods to a Life Flask. There are no resistances or attributes on PoB gear.

Tree and build variations:
Defensive variation sacrifices dexterity and a bit of damage to get +1 curse for Enfeeble, Resolute Technique and another Endurance charge. It also uses Bloodseeker and Brass Dome. It is completely unnecessary for normal game but it can be used for Delve or HC.

ASCENDANCY:
-Undeniable
-Unflinching
-Unstoppable
-Unbreakable

I would go with the above order.

BANDITS: Kill All

LEVELING:
Leveling is pretty simple. Use any skill you like with an appropriate weapon, until you get Dominating Blow. Once you get it, you can use any weapon type you want. Choose the ones that give you better dps on your attack, just make sure if you are dual-wielding, to pick weapons that can use the same movement skill.

As for the tree, go for Spiritual Command and Spiritual Aid first, so you can scale your damage and attack speed from minion stats. Apart from that, pathing dosen't matter. Pick up whatever you need more as you go.

If you are facing mana problems early on, you can grab nodes like Deep Thoughts or Righteous Decree and respec later, once you get some mana leech from gear.


Gems:
Spoiler

6Link:
Dominating Blow-Brutality-Melee Physical Damage-Multistrike-Fortify-Maim (Boss) / Melee Splash (Clearing)

4Links:
Cast When Damage Taken - Molten Shell - Increased Duration - Summon Carrion Golem

Cast When Damage Taken (level 1) - Desecrate (level 7) - Flesh Offering (level 8) - Vulnerability (level 5)

3Links:
Whirling Blades - Faster Attacks - Blood Magic

No Links:
Pride
Flesh and Stone
War Banner
Ancestral Protector
Vaal Haste (level 10)

Gem setup
Gem setup is pretty versatile. You can use gems like Convocation, Summon Holy Relic or use Stone Golem for defensive variation. Vaal Ancestral Warchief will give more dps to your main hit, but you will hit slower, so use each depending on your attack speed. This setup is based on my personal playstyle.

Vaal Haste is not used an aura and it's level depends on your dexterity.

New Minion Support Gems
Meat Shield: Might be used for a really defensive variation.
Deathmark: It is a small dps boost for minions but a big dps loss for our main hit, same as Minion Damage support.
Feeding Frenzy: If you need to use it for the minion behaviour, you can replace Melee splash for no dps loss, since sentinels now have an AoE attack (Crusade Slam). MS just helps with fast summoning while clearing.

Idealy, you can use a 6link with a white socket, so you can use any of the above gems without any real penalty.

Summon Carrion Golem: Can be used as a 4link on a helmet with "+# to level of socketed minion gems", to provide a decent damage boost, at the cost of some versatility on gem setup.

Why not Herald of Purity?
Mainly because of mana issues. To sustain it, we will need to sacrifice damage or defences and I prefer to have less minions hitting harder. In case though you get Circle of Guilt rings with reduced mana reservation (also can get it as lab enchant) and increased damage for purity sentinels, then it is worth the trouble to build around them. You can slot HoP on a helmet with "+# to level of socketed minion gems".


Gear:
Guidelines

Helmet

Bone helmet gives a decent damage boost. Any type of rare helmet will do, if you want one with a specific lab enchant. If you are using Herald of Purity as a minion skill, you can slot it on a helmet with "+# to level of socketed minion gems".

Lab enchants are not necessary, but ones that give additional magic/rare sentinels are cheap to get.


Belt

Stygian vise (for another jewel slot).

Belt of the deceiver is a very good unique option, both defensively and offensively. Intimidate gives a better damage boost than a good jewel, but a rare belt can give much higher life/resistances in combination with the abyssal jewel.


Jewels

Since we are playing as a hybrid, we have lots of options here. The ones that benefit us most, are Abyssal Ghastly Jewels and Cobalt Jewels.

Ghastly Jewels:
-Minions have #% increased attack/cast speed
-Increased Minion damage if you used a minion skill recently
-Minions deal # to # additional Physical Damage

-Maximum Life
-Minions have #% chance to Blind/Taunt on Hit with Attacks

Cobalt Jewels:
-Minions deal #% increased Damage
-#% increased Attack Speed
-#% increased Attack and Cast Speed

-#% increased maximum Life

If you are satisfied with your HP, you can skip it and just go for damage. Blind is very good if you want to run with Blood Stance instead of Sand Stance.

For alteration crafting early on, try with ghastly jewels for HP and one dps stat, or cobalt jewels for 2 dps stats.


Weapons

We have some good unique options here. Dual wielding The Scourge, gives a great damage boost and can be used for all content without the need to craft weapons.
Victario's Charity is better for minion dps (when frenzy/power charges are up) and good defensively, but we loose damage and attack speed on our main hit.
Using Bloodseeker along with The Scourge, is a better defensive option without taking a big hit on our own dps.

You can farm The Scourge from Pit of the Chimera Boss.

For SSF and weapon crafting in general, we can use any weapon we want. Claws are good for attack speed, life gain on hit and life leech implicits. Using Bound Fossils is the best way to roll minion damage on weapons. Crafted weapons can give a much higher dps boost than The Scourge. Ideally, we need:
-Good physical dps
-Decent attack speed
-Minion Damage
-Space to craft Minion Attack Speed or Damage on Bench.

You can also try your luck with Essence of Fear.


Rest

We look for rare gear with the following.

Defensive stats:
Life
Resistances
Movement speed on boots

Offensive stats (Rings, Amulet, Gloves):
Adds # to # Physical damage to attacks
Attack Speed

Can also craft "+1 to minimum Frenzy Charges" (Unveiled) on rings and amulet.

We will also need any amount of mana and life leech on any item and dexterity to meet gem/weapon requirements.


Flasks
The usual modifiers we need on regular flasks, are "Removes bleeding" and "Removes freeze and chill". You can roll those on life flasks. Some good options are:

Lion's Roar: Big damage boost for our main hit
Silver Flask: Damage boost for our main hit
Sulphur flask: Damage boost for our main hit and life regeneration
Topaz, Ruby, Sapphire flasks: Use those to lessen elemental damage taken.




Useful Uniques

Leveling:
Tabula Rasa with "+2 to level of socketed duration gems"
Belt of the deceiver for a very good dps boost
Wurm's Molt for early access to mana and life leech
Earendel's Embrace is a good weapon choice to boost minion dps

Endgame:
*None of the below are needed. They are just options if you want to invest more.

The Brass Dome fits nicely because we can reach high HP with no bonus from body armour. It can be farmed from Maze of the Minotaur Boss.

Circle of Guilt with reduced mana reservation and increased damage of Purity Sentinels, makes Herald of Purity a good option for additional dps.

Impresence (Physical), allows us to use Vulnerability as an aura by using Blasphemy support. A decent dps boost.

Aul's Uprising (Haste) is not the easiest unique to get. In case you get lucky, you can use Haste as an aura which is a nice boost for both you and your minions. Pride variation can also be used to open more options for the build (like herald of purity, aspect of the spider).

Videos:
3.7
Old Berserker Variation. New videos will be added at some point.

T12-Carcass
T15-Caldera
T16-Maze of the Minotaur

Last edited by Jdahl22 on Sep 21, 2019, 9:32:21 AM
Last bumped on Oct 9, 2020, 2:38:50 AM
Can i use The Writhing Jar ?
I did this build last league as gaurdian. Withering jars are a must for clear imo. I spammed them to keep minions up.
There are a lot of differences from guardian versions. Withering jar is completely unnecessary for clearing. The only situation that might come in handy is maybe in really tough boss fights with no adds to kill, or if you die and don't want to go back with no minions. The whole point is to build around tankiness so you don't have to worry about going melee to summon.
I am new to the game. I am confused if i am supposed to use any kind of minion or a certain type?
"
KliierQueen wrote:
I am new to the game. I am confused if i am supposed to use any kind of minion or a certain type?


Dominating Blow: An attack skill that summons minions on kill and on hit
Herald of Purity: A toggle skill that summons minions when you hit/kill with any skill.

If you want to try any other type of minion, you can.
Playing this in HC and love it so far. Level 83 and chugging along.

Had some issues with minion survivability, but those have mostly gone away with the leech node and gem levels. We'll see how well it keeps scaling (only through tier 5 maps now).

I went with Victario's Charity and I'm thinking of maybe pursuing Craiceann's Carapace as my goal chest. How valuable do you find the Aspect of the Spider (I'd be replacing it with Aspect of the Crab)?

Current Gear:
Aspect of the spider gives both offensive and defensive bonus. Also, more phys reduction is not probably needed for jugg. If I were to try HC, I would probably try to build around higher regen and higher health pool. So I would go with rare chest and probably more end charges, kaom's way rings etc.

Another option would be to try to balance more between main hit damage and minion damage, so with better leech you could try bloodseeker and scourge.

Edit: Added a high regen variation. Will test at some point and post results.
Last edited by Jdahl22 on Dec 21, 2018, 9:05:51 AM
I played this build on SSF HC. I got to level 92 and downed Elder, Atziri and the guardians. I enjoyed it a lot. Really picked up around 84 when I started stacking more health and increased my attack speed.
I played this build on SSF HC. I got to level 92 and downed Elder, Atziri and the guardians. I enjoyed it a lot. Really picked up around 84 when I started stacking more health and increased my attack speed.

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