By far the worst unique yet, not because it's weak but because it's 100% in the wrong direction

Vaal Warchief now gives 80% more damage with Panopticon and stays up for 20 seconds in boss fights or just have permanent 50% more attack speed.

This is the complete opposite of what has been overwhelmingly asked by melee players for so long - removing totem buffs and compensating for it elsewhere. It is not fun to just press 1 button before every rare+ fight, every time, with no strategy, just as a "more damage" button.
Now on top of that, you are automatically locked out of boots for every build as well.

Melee totems with these boots are mandatory for every melee build for maximum DPS, and not mandatory as in "Woohoo BBQ time wif my giga size rare buffs" but "Okay, I got the mandatory numerical BIS item for every melee build in the game for a dogshit mechanic that I hate but I have to use for DPS - what's next?"

Even Mageblood which is borderline God mode is swapped out by Headhunter on some endgame builds. These boots will not be swapped out with anything.

SMH (Shaking My Headhunter)

EDIT: I just remembered that I even wrote about it in August
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3293745

Haha you know after this league warchief is going to be nerfed all the way down to 5% more damage and protector will be 5% more attack speed. Then it will be "balanced."

Melee will get zero buffs to compensate these nerfs.

Yup. Very poorly designed item. Too much in too wrong a spot. They should have given it a -30% move speed.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Yup. Very poorly designed item. Too much in too wrong a spot. They should have given it a -30% move speed.

Just removing it's unique effect would have done the deal, as some fights you cannot keep the totem up, so it would have at least had some conditionals in some scenarios but now it's not a problem anymore and you're just permanently with at the very least 50% more damage from attack speed.

will agree these boots were definitely a mistake.

honestly I would be happy if GGG knee jerked and disabled these from dropping before league even goes live. hope GGG pays attention before anyone use these as shown.

They gave it max life, near max MS and two huge unique effects (100% effect and linger). It's prettttttty nuts.

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Bleu42 wrote:

They gave it max life, near max MS and two huge unique effects (100% effect and linger). It's prettttttty nuts.

It is so powerful that i want to give up on my league starter and go for this.

It better be 10 times rarer than mageblood, because it is 10 times better than mageblood.

well shit

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CAKE wrote:

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Bleu42 wrote:

They gave it max life, near max MS and two huge unique effects (100% effect and linger). It's prettttttty nuts.

It is so powerful that i want to give up on my league starter and go for this.

It better be 10 times rarer than mageblood, because it is 10 times better than mageblood.

AND it drops from regular exarch.

The best thing about this thread is that despite all the complaining directed GGG's way, both directly and indirectly, these boots are from the community.