[3.14] Self-Cast Exsanguinate Scion - Raider/Gladiator - Surprisingly Tanky League Starter

Welcome to Wilucco's first build guide! I am a streamer on Twitch (twitch.tv/wilucco) that normally does off-the-walls meme builds, but I never felt confident enough in them to write guides. In Ultimatum I wanted to try out the Blood Tentacle build and ended up making this one which I've enjoyed immensely and wanted to share with the world, even if it's not that memey. I league started with this build easily and face-rolled a lot of Ultimatums all the way through early red maps. T15 and T16 Ultimatums are still doable, they just get a bit scary when you have Pain Attunement and 2k-3k life with no ES. If you decide to try it, or you have suggestions to improve it, feel free to let me know in this thread or you can find my other contact information in the Notes of the PoB build. YEET!

Pros/Cons:
Spoiler
Pros:
Can clear a whole screen with 1 cast
Lots of defensive layers for very little investment
Perma-Onslaught and Perma-Phasing makes for fast mapping and easy Ultimatums
Once you hit Low Life you can clear t16s and ultimatums with 2k life and I just think that's fun

Cons:
Limited sources of scaling makes the damage feel capped past a certain point
Even with Raider ascendancy, not as smooth as playing Spellslinger
After activating Pain Attunement and Petrified Blood, the build becomes very vulnerable to ground-based Degen zones and one shots in t15+


Defensive Layers:
Spoiler
With full focus on Defense:
70%+ Block Chance
50%+ Spell Block Chance
75% Attack Dodge Chance
60%+ Spell Dodge Chance
30%+ Evade Chance
40% reduced damage taken if you haven't been hit recently
Perma-Onslaught
Perma-Phasing
Elusive

Full disclosure:
These get trimmed down a bit as the build progresses to fit cluster jewels


PoB:
Spoiler
https://pastebin.com/SwVphuRF

Default tree and items are meant for a character freshly in maps. To see full damage information, use “Clusters Post-Pain Attunement” tree, “TOP TIER” item set, disable the “Pre-Pain Attunement Auras” skill group, and enable the “Post-Pain Attunement Auras” skill groups.


Mind Over Matter/Agnostic, Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics:
Spoiler
MoM/Agnostic:
Spoiler
Through the campaign and early maps, I didn't reserve my mana fully, but I also didn't use any of it for my abilities, so it felt nice to use MoM or Agnostic to get some value out of it. If you do that you'll want to run a mana flask to keep it active since the build has no real mana sustain mechanics. You can swap out of them any time you want to stop using a mana flask, but the latest you should keep it is when you swap to Low Life with Petrified Blood. At that point you want to reserve as much mana as possible to increase your damage instead with Pride and Malevolence.


Acro/Phase Acro:
Spoiler
This is a similar story to MoM/Agnostic. This build runs Glancing Blows to maximize our block chance even if it means taking damage when we block. Acrobatics takes some of that block chance away in favor of 39% Attack Dodge chance and 30% Spell Dodge chance with Phase Acrobatics. This is all well and good when we have a decent life pool to tank the hits that get through both block and dodge, but once we get to low life and Petrified Blood, we need as much block chance as possible to mitigate damage as often as possible. The extra dodge ends up not outweighing the lost block chance, particularly for spells. So those points should be unallocated once Petrified Blood is activated.


Ascendancies:
Raider -> Ranger Start -> Gladiator

Bandits and Pantheon:
Spoiler
Bandits: Kill them all
Major: Lunaris for Mapping, Solaris for Bossing
Minor: Rhyslatha for unlimited life flasks


Gear:
Spoiler
Weapon:
Spoiler
For early endgame, a cheap wand that has 70%+ Spell damage and either Physical DoT Multiplier or generic DoT Multiplier will get you through yellow maps

I was able to break through red maps with a 1ex-ish wand with 100%+ Spell Damage and both Physical and generic DoT modifiers.

If you want to spend a lot on your weapon, you can go for one with +1 all spell gems, +1 all physical spell gems, either kind of DoT multiplier, and cast speed. At the time of this writing, no wand is listed in Ultimatum league with all of those mods, and wands with just the gem level mods start at 5ex.


Shield:
Spoiler
A rare evasion shield with extra block or dodge chance will suffice for early maps. Once you get a Vulnerability on Hit ring, Thirst for Horrors adds a lot of survivability with leech on hit against cursed enemies. When you get comfortable enough to switch to Low Life, you'll want to swap to Prism Guardian to allow easy reservation of your life.


Body Armor:
Spoiler
If you can get 4 off-colors on a 5-socket evasion base, that would be ideal for starting maps, but barring that you should prioritize getting a 2R2B1G 5-link on any base with decent life and resistances.

Ultimately the goal is to transition to a 6L Kintsugi with 2R3B1G if you want to run Unleash on Exsanguinate or 2R2B2G if you want to run Swift Affliction. The pros and cons of each are listed in the Gems and Links section.

Kintsugi is pretty expensive, so if you don't want to farm a bunch of currency for it, you can just spam prophecies for the Deadly Rivalry prophecy chain. It is a guaranteed drop from completing Deadly Rivalry V.


Jewelry:
Spoiler
You need an open suffix on at least one of your rings or your amulet to use the “+1 to minimum Frenzy charges” Betrayal craft to enable Raider's perma-Onslaught in combination with the right amount of Pacifism jewels.

Amulet:
Spoiler
Anoint Arcane Swiftness

A good amulet to have by early red maps has Elder or Hunter influence, good life, and “physical damage leeched as life” or “physical damage over time multiplier”.

The end goal for jewelry is to get a hunter amulet with good life, “physical damage leeched as life”, “physical damage over time multiplier” and “+1 to level of strength spell skill gems”.


Rings:
Spoiler
A Warlord-influenced ring with Vulnerability on Hit, and a non-influenced ring with high resistance and life will be enough to get you through red maps.

If you manage to get a pair of Slink Gloves corrupted with Vulnerability on hit, you'll want to change your Warlord ring to a Hunter ring that has Despair on hit (if you corrupt into Despair on hit you don't have to change your Warlord ring), then change your other ring to Doedre's Damning to allow space for both curses.


Belt:
Spoiler
For your belt you can either wear a Stygian Vise with an anti-Corrupting Blood jewel and high life or the Physical Damage Leech version of Doryani's Invitation.


Jewels:
Spoiler
To unlock perma-Onslaught from the Raider ascendancy, we need to make sure we are always at max frenzy charges. To do that, we just run as many Pacifism jewels as we need to match our current minimum Frenzy charges. If you only put the +1 minimum Frenzy craft on one piece of jewelery, you need 2 Pacifism jewels, 1 jewel if you use 2 crafts, and 0 jewels if you want to go crazy and use 3 minimum frenzy crafts.

One Jewel or Abyss Jewel that at least has life and the anti-Corrupting Blood implicit. If you can also get any relevant damage or utility mods, those are a nice bonus.


Helmet:
Spoiler
A Lion Pelt with life, resistance, and the Exsanguinate Damage enchant. If you can get one that is ilvl 80 with Redeemer influence, you can also go for reduced reservation of skills and/or +1 to maximum Unleash seals if you like using Unleash.


Gloves:
Spoiler
Slink Gloves if you want to prioritize evasion or Apothecary Gloves if you want to prioritize damage. For mods you want life and whatever res you may need to reach the cap. If you get Elder of Hunter influence gloves at ilvl 80, you can get some extra Physical DoT Multiplier as well.

Ideal gloves will be Slink Gloves with life, resistance, and the Elder or Hunter Physical DoT Multiplier that are also corrupted with Vulnerability or Despair on hit. That will be when you want to change your non-influenced ring to Doedre's Damning.


Boots:
Spoiler
Slink Boots or Two-Tone Boots with life, resistance, and move speed. I recommend upgrading to Elder-influenced boots at some point with Increased Duration support built in and moving your Corrupting Fever gems into them. It makes the ability much more expensive, but the extra duration makes life a lot easier.

Top tier boots would be double-influenced with Elder and Hunter so you can have both the increased duration modifier and Tailwind. Even if we don't crit that often, it's still nice to have when it does happen.


Flasks:
Spoiler
Taste of Hate, Quartz Flask, Quicksilver Flask, Sulphur Flask, Blood of the Karui
Just make sure you have anti-curse, anti-freeze, and anti-bleed on any of the non-uniques.
Replace the Sulphur Flask with a mana flask if you want to run MoM or Agnostic early on.


Cluster Jewels:
Spoiler
1x Large: 8-socket Increased Physical Damage with Furious Assault and Master the Fundamentals
2x Medium: 4 or 5-socket Physical DoT Multiplier with Blood Artist and Brewed for Potency
1x Small: 2-socket Increased Life with Brush with Death
I chose to use the open socket in the second medium jewel to hold an extra eye jewel.


Gems and Links:
Spoiler
Damage Links:
Exsanguinate – Controlled Destruction – Efficacy – Brutality – Chain - Unleash/Swift Affliction

Run Unleash if you want to quickly stack your DoTs. Great for clear and sporadic casting on bosses
Run Swift Affliction if you want more damage per cast. SA allows you to be more mobile since you will not be stuck in multiple cast animations at the same time. Awakened Swift Affliction gives more damage than Empower 4, so if you're dropping exalts on gems, I recommend Awakened Swift Affliction.

Corrupting Fever – Brutality – Efficacy – Swift Affliction
Increased Duration support from Elder-influenced boots makes it much easier to keep Corrupting Fever active

Auras:
Spoiler
Pre-Pain Attunement:
Pride, Flesh and Stone. If you don't want to run MoM or Agnostic, you can also fit Vitality up to level 5.

Post-Pain Attunement:
Prism Guardian:
Petrified Blood, Flesh and Stone, Enlighten 3

MH Weapon:
Pride, Malevolence, and Enlighten 3

Enlighten 3 isn't necessary to make this work, but it should give just enough unreserved mana to allow the use of smoke mine for some extra mobility.

Petrified Blood and leech:
Spoiler
According to Gryphenprey's own build guide for Exsanguinate Scion ( https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3087506 ) by reserving just under 50% of our life while running Petrified Blood, leech will never allow us to reach max unreserved life and will therefore never remove itself before its full duration passes. This makes leech a lot more valuable to this build after activating Petrified Blood even if we don't get much leech from the small hits of Exsanguinate. Enlighten 3 in Prism Guardian brings our life reservation with these auras to 47% so it works out perfectly for this.



Guard Skills:
CWDT – Immortal Call – Summon Stone Golem – Vulnerability
When you get a Vulnerability on hit ring, you can replace Vulnerability here with Increased Duration support

Movement Skills:
Flame Dash – Smoke Mine – Lifetap – Second Wind
Linking your movement skill to Lifetap allows you to escape even if Mind over Matter YEETs your whole mana pool or if you reserve 99% of your mana. Second Wind is always a nice thing to have.


Thank you for reading!
Last bumped on Jun 30, 2021, 4:20:44 PM
Hi I decided to try this for the recent ssf hc event. it took me two days to get past the butcher but once past was quite cruisey.
I just started another on ult normal and its a very easy to level build so far. I noticed you have changed your build on your character. I am only around lvl 40 atm wondering if you would recommend following your characters path or the post above.. thanks for having a crack at building a guide.
"
MimpiHantu wrote:
Hi I decided to try this for the recent ssf hc event. it took me two days to get past the butcher but once past was quite cruisey.
I just started another on ult normal and its a very easy to level build so far. I noticed you have changed your build on your character. I am only around lvl 40 atm wondering if you would recommend following your characters path or the post above.. thanks for having a crack at building a guide.

Thanks for giving it a try! I've actually been meaning to update this guide to make it match the current state of my character because the changes were made thanks to experimentation done after I wrote it. Most of the differences you see between my character and what's already here are best left until after you have activated Pain Attunement and Petrified Blood, so I would still recommend following the earlier trees if you're not at that point yet.

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info