[3.23] Versatile Combatant Impale Shield Crush Slayer - Crush the Atlas - SSF Compatible

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SenseiTomato wrote:

Hi! I've been eyeing your build as a starter for 3.19, what do you think about using the buffed Emperor's Vigilance as a starter shield? For reference, it now has 1800 armor assuming 20% quality, on a shield you can equip as early as level 46. Being forced to use Glancing Blows on a gladiator kinda sucks, but it also allows you to hold off from speccing into some of the block nodes on the tree until you get a better shield.

It's something you could use as an option for damage but the problem is that Glancing Blows invalidates the defensive power of this build, mainly because we do not have % life gain on hit or large flat life gain on hit numbers.

Personally I wouldn't use it, but you're free to try and let me know!

I've taken a few leagues off since I last played this but I was looking at armour/evasion stacking champion version of shield crush.

I'm still playing in POB to get the auras calculated for a league start scenario, and it might require something like a pride reservation amulet or small cluster jewel.

The basic idea is you run low life champion for the near permanent adrenaline and go hybrid armour/evasion. Defensively you get to 90% damage reduction and at least 90% chance to evade (not counting flesh and stone blind) and still have some shield block. Also 100% spell suppression (which will be even easier due to the passive tree changes.

Mapping with the build was really easy but I remember boss fights being kind of sluggish because frenzy charges were hard to sustain. I saw a guy on poe.ninja using poachers mark which I love for a few reasons. It gives life/mana on hit which solves any mana issues. It adds flat phys for the impale which is just a bonus. Also there are the 2 mark wheels near the ranger area that you can get culling, or increased damage taken, or chance to gain frenzy charge.

I also discovered the massive thread of hope reaches both of the impale notables and 2x 40% damage while leeching nodes. The build also uses precise technique for a big damage boost since crit isn't that viable, but accuracy isn't that difficult to since our weapon is a stat stick (last resort or dreadbeak).

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OMFGaTaco wrote:

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SenseiTomato wrote:

Hi! I've been eyeing your build as a starter for 3.19, what do you think about using the buffed Emperor's Vigilance as a starter shield? For reference, it now has 1800 armor assuming 20% quality, on a shield you can equip as early as level 46. Being forced to use Glancing Blows on a gladiator kinda sucks, but it also allows you to hold off from speccing into some of the block nodes on the tree until you get a better shield.

It's something you could use as an option for damage but the problem is that Glancing Blows invalidates the defensive power of this build, mainly because we do not have % life gain on hit or large flat life gain on hit numbers.

Personally I wouldn't use it, but you're free to try and let me know!

I've been thinking recently - what about crit? The combined amount of armor and ES Vigilance gives is bonkers; with a Seething Fury, some point re-investment and swapping out an aura for Precision you can convert to crit fairly easily and get some nasty DPS, though at the cost of tankiness due to Glancing Blows as you've said.

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SenseiTomato wrote:

I've been thinking recently - what about crit? The combined amount of armor and ES Vigilance gives is bonkers; with a Seething Fury, some point re-investment and swapping out an aura for Precision you can convert to crit fairly easily and get some nasty DPS, though at the cost of tankiness due to Glancing Blows as you've said.

As far as I'm aware you can do a critical version but it takes a lot more investment. I do not have a critical version of this build because of the investment you have to make to get it off the ground, as this build is designed to be simple and relatively cheap.

Quick question as I'm looking to try this build in 3.19.

Is the Fortification Mastery supposed to be "Melee Hits Fortify, -3 to Maximum Fortification" instead of "+3 to fortification"?

I can't see how you get currently get fortify without this.

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Deadscale wrote:

Quick question as I'm looking to try this build in 3.19.

Is the Fortification Mastery supposed to be "Melee Hits Fortify, -3 to Maximum Fortification" instead of "+3 to fortification"?

I can't see how you get currently get fortify without this.

Thank you for the catch! I was wondering why 3 nodes randomly vanished when I updated things. The pobb.in has been updated accordingly.

Couple other tweaks for consideration:

If you want the stance reservation mastery, why not take brinkmanship for the extra AOE? Strike range does nothing for shield crush and it's only a 4% damage difference.

Unholy might is checked for some reason in the config lol, it doesn't affect the DPS but that should be off.

High end change - take the 20% impale chance physical mastery and drop the impale support gem. Switch the impale effect minor to impale change to get to 94% impale chance. Jewels can roll 5-7% to hit 100 or getting 25% aura effect will boost dread banner.

This opens up the 6th gem slot for other options like maim, fortify, maybe even conc effect if you hate AOE. Fortify gem pushes to 29% reduced damage and you can switch the other mastery to another reduced 10% DoT which is really good with block.

Is this build HC SSF viable or only SSF viable?

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fate3 wrote:

Couple other tweaks for consideration:

If you want the stance reservation mastery, why not take brinkmanship for the extra AOE? Strike range does nothing for shield crush and it's only a 4% damage difference.

We take the Assured Strike cluster for two reasons: the first reason is because of the slight better damage (we don't need the aoe from Brinkmanship because of Slayer mastery). The second reason is for an extra notable for Lethal Pride

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fate3 wrote:

Unholy might is checked for some reason in the config lol, it doesn't affect the DPS but that should be off.

Not sure why this is there but I will tweak when I get the time!

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fate3 wrote:

High end change - take the 20% impale chance physical mastery and drop the impale support gem. Switch the impale effect minor to impale change to get to 94% impale chance. Jewels can roll 5-7% to hit 100 or getting 25% aura effect will boost dread banner.

About 2 weeks into league I bought a watchers eye jewel just like that one for about 8ex or so which made things a lot easier to deal with on the tree. You can do your method with the impale chance instead if needed or add the impale chance jewels, but you can probably pull dread banner for war banner if you get the 2x watcher's eye and an impale jewel or two.

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fate3 wrote:

This opens up the 6th gem slot for other options like maim, fortify, maybe even conc effect if you hate AOE. Fortify gem pushes to 29% reduced damage and you can switch the other mastery to another reduced 10% DoT which is really good with block.

Our 6th gem slot goes to Lifetap because its the best damage for us apart from Concentrated effect. We do not run concentrated effect because it has too much of an int requirement and it reduces aoe too much. We already get maim from other sources (flesh and stone, totems) and fortify is better to grab on the tree than use the gem.

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Helion139 wrote:

Is this build HC SSF viable or only SSF viable?

100% SSF viable (high investment version won't use the watcher's eye but you can use passive masteries and some impale chance jewel mods to hit it). I pulled out the 'HC' part of it because we don't run Determination, but it should be fine for HC as long as you play safe and have Determination on. You can drop HoP and Flesh and Stone for Determination and you should be fine on that front.

I saw that you have many experience about Shield Crush skill and I read your thread from 3.15. I have been trying to get crit build with pure physical damage recently and do not use totems. And now I dont know what to do next.
My pob: https://pastebin.com/xxm3nQ7f
Can you check and should I invest cullingstrike on glove? Or I should change from physical convert to elemental damaged but I will have to change many items.
Thank you so much and hope to recieve your advice soon.