Poeninja

As a former player coming back after ~6 years I love so much u/aer0_reddit 's Hydrosphere build but at the same time I'm overwhelmed by the supposed alternatives
After reaching level 50 I've checked the endgame build and, because it looks very expensive, I've also checked poeninja and found this build which looks a bit safer because that player seems to be using a shield and not 2 Void batteries like in his endgame build but don't know if it's also cheaper...
So, which one is cheaper and safer:

• Aer0's initial edgame https://pastebin.com/fRzVQEFp (12/9/22)
• that poeninja build
• Palesteron's edited version feat. Spell suppress and profane bloom - a build he also shared at some point https://pastebin.com/07np6gzR

From my understanding - if I go the shield path should I use items with armor and chance to block?

basically title- i tried to find a build for scorching ray, but did not found a single good one. poeninja has near zero builds with it. Just buff damage and maybe some RF guys will take it.

I made a post about what build I should use for the no hit sanctum (https://www.reddit.com/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/11plrb6/no_hit_sanctum_build_before_league_end/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf ).I have settled on shockwave totem. However there aren’t many build guides out there that fit the high dps no hit sanctum setup. I have come across this https://youtu.be/KNLCHhi9120 for no hit. I have however found another that seems good from poeninja https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/chaGangDongPig/충격과공포의토템?i=2&search=skill%3DDivergent-Shockwave-Totem%26sort%3Ddps.
If you could please let me know what high dps builds with a pob you guys used and your experience with them so far so I can start crafting and acquiring the gear. I plan to use a mage blood and have 250divs to invest. Please and thank you

Recrafting synth mods at the ultra-high end has received most of the spotlight this league, and those (most players) who cannot afford the triple-synth implicit mod items may look to uniques, Eldrich crafts, or Influenced items to improve their character power. However, judging by the limited availability of these items on the market, players are missing out on a whole new suite of powerful rare mods that are enabled by the Fracturing Orb. The purpose of this post is to highlight some fractured item crafting using old mods that you may not know are in the game.
For anyone who is truly unfamiliar with how to make these items but wants to learn, please use this website to help you: CraftofExile
1) Non-Hunter Influenced +1 Curse Chestpiece (DELVE MOD)
If you watch any streamers, maybe some Locohol VODs, you might be familiar with reforging "Caster" with harvest on a Hunter-influenced chestpiece to guarantee the prefix "You can apply an additional Curse". The problem with this crafting method is that harvest reforging changes in 3.19 have increased crafting difficulty for good influenced items.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/AMcPXAf
2) EK Ignite Gloves with Faster Ignite Damage (DELVE MOD)
Top EK ignite profiles (poeninja) appear to use their gloves as a stat-slot rather than a big damage slot. Gloves are usually Eldrich influenced with fire dot multi + either ignite prolif area or fire exposure, and most players finish their gloves with a benchcrafted 25% phys to cold conversion. I will leave it to a dedicated EK ignite player to determine whether these gloves are an improvement, but here is my take. I used the crafted "damage while leeching" mod and paired it with a "fire dmg leeched as life" implicit.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/pc0Rdg4
3) Non-Influenced, Non-Synth Curse on Hit Rings (DELVE MOD)
This one might be controversial, reason being that current "Curse with X on Hit" rings cost less than using fracturing orbs to hit the curse on hit mod. The upside to this ring is specifically for players who 1) want to keep a ring's implicit, and 2) want to protect the "curse on hit" mod due to having a high crafting budget.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/JtYPmt8
4) 40-60% increased Damage vs Cursed Enemies on Boots (DELVE MOD)
You would be correct to assume that I spent a lot of time working on curse-related items above because I see basically no one using this drop-only boot prefix. Item is self-explanatory.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/ws8B0Xr
5) Temple Giga-Life chest (TEMPLE MOD)
The community learned about this mod early so it is not as unknown as many others. The benefit of this mod is an extra 10% increased Maximum Life mod in addition to T2 chest life (110-119). In this example, I've removed the prefixes down to just the lone fractured mod, and used Suffixes Cannot Be Changed and used a T4 Aisling to guarantee a single Veiled mod for 10% maximum life. This actually stacks with the Temple mod, giving 20% increased max life on this chest.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/74nokMq
6) +5% Max Res to single element Fractured Shield (DELVE MOD)
This is kind of a weird one, but +3% max res for any element in delve actually fits in the prefix slot, not the suffix slot. This means you can lock a +3% max res shield and roll the suffixes until +2% all max res + other mods you like. Of interest, the delve % max res prefix blocks all of the single % max res suffixes, but not the all res suffix. What makes this good is that normal +5% max res shields unfortunately use 2 suffixes. The suffix mod pool is more valuable on non-influenced shields than prefixes (except for max life). This method opens an extra suffix mod slot for things like avoid ailments, spell supp, etc, and should enable much stronger shields.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/C2VDpTD
7) Bonus Damage with Element Fractured Gloves (TEMPLE MOD)
If you follow many streamers you are very likely to have come across these gloves. Made famous in part because of how easy it is to reroll the temple stat (harvest resistance A to B, then B to A), these gloves are top tier for a LOT of build, particularly cold-based builds. This example is for Tornado Shot players converting Phys to Cold damage.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/pKNyKZ8
8) 32% Reduced Mana Reservation Helmet (TEMPLE MOD)
Xopec mod (10% reduced mana reservation + flat mana hybrid mod), if fractured, combines nicely with Loathing Essence and Eldrich Implicits. We are very unlikely to see many people take advantage of this tech because this method cannot include a Labyrinth Helmet enchant, meaning you will need a Lab runner or a whole lot of personal time to complete this helmet. I have included this craft at the bottom of the list for that reason.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/Euf5uLd
I hope this post will encourage more of you to look into other drop-only mods and make some cool crafts :)

Both CI versions with mageblood.
Found a good fractured wand and I'm chasing lvl 100 (without paying). Stuck at 99 on occultist, thought I'd try on trickster since I've seen it get praised for being tanky.
After checking out poeninja, I'm not sure I see how as most of them are relying on a lone granite flask as their phys reduction. All the leech in the world isn't going to save you from a one shot. Or am I missing something obvious?
Is it worth making the switch or are their bulks actually comparable? The only feasible upgrades I see for my occultist at this point are 10% phys taken as chaos instead of 8% taken as ele on helm, another 2% phys taken as chaos on aegis, determination/phys reduction eye and maybe 200 ish ES.

Trying to do one of these at the end of each league just to share some stuff I learned throughout the league. Up until around Harvest League, I pretty much just went from meta skill to meta skill without much thought, from open beta to Ultimatum. Was honestly really fun and made sense with the way the game was balanced, but times change.
The past few leagues I've gotten to the point where finding, altering, and creating builds is something I feel confident in. Spent tons of time on youtube, poeninja, and of course lived in PoB. Poeninja and youtube are both amazing resources for build inspiration, and both reward experience with them. Poeninja is more obvious and widely used, but don't ever sleep on how OP some random af build with a no-mic, 80 views video might be. Tons of amazing builds on youtube; just google a skill/archetype/idea and type in the current patch.
This league, my focus was on learning the Atlas Tree. Only time before this league I felt like I was printing currency was Expedition league, when I was selling artifacts/reroll for pure exalts of profit, with gumball loot/currency from logbooks being used to fund rolling/buying logbooks. Felt like I was cheating.
This league, I spent as much time in PoE Planner as I did PoB. I really wanted to get as familiar and confident with the Atlas Tree as with the Passive Tree, and I feel like I accomplished that, since I can picture the whole goddamn thing in my head just thinking about it now.
This was, and by a huge margin, the best tree/farming method (for my personal preference) I found this league. Should also note that it's amazing right now too, so if you're looking for a late league tree, seriously try this out:
https://poeplanner.com/a/4ul
https://poeplanner.com/a/4or
https://poeplanner.com/a/4oH
https://poeplanner.com/a/4oT
All variations of the same tree. Played several hundred maps using the first 2. Didn't try the 3rd, but it's the same strat but with Harvest cut out and all the points concentrated into the other stuff (Extra harby chance, some Heist stuff, conq/guardian map chance, Exarch points). I considered running it, but Harvest just seemed to be the best use of the points in my estimation, even if it's just going in and killing only t3 yellow crops and checking for good spawns.
4th tree is the base strat with Harvest knocked off, showing that you can pretty much do anything with the amazing core of Essence+Harby+Heist. 42 spare points to go towards Exarch or Eater and any mechanic you want.
My strat was alch'n'go City Squares. Scarabs were just Gilded Harby, Gilded Meta if taking the Metamorph points. Carto scarab could be used as well, but I was oversustaining without it, so I didn't want to bother with the extra hassle of buying the scarab and having another thing to sell.
Harbinger is completely busted. Forget anything you saw on reddit about people whining about Fracturing Orb rarity. You will get them, but that's not all Harbi is great for. Annuls, Ancients, and Exalts all sell easily in bulk, and you get tons of them.
In addition, Harbinger is solely, basically 100% responsible for map sustain in this strategy. Idk the exact details of Harbinger loot, but while they seem to drop less "normal" items to balance them dropping currency shards, it also seems like maps are excluded from this. Harbingers drop a fuck-ton of maps. I was able to oversustain in a Singular focus strat rolling shitty alch'n'go maps with no juice, and only taking 3 of the 4 Shaping nodes.
Thing about Harbinger is, you need to take/use everything. Gilded Scarab+Compass+Zana mod+Atlas points = 9-10 Harbingers per map! 4 from scarab, 3 from map device, 1 from Atlas Points (10% chance for 2, please god never increase this % until you have 100% chance to drop additional currency shards), and 1 from compass. Interestingly, the 1 from the compass actually can't become a King Harbinger, but all the others can.
Winged is probably fine too, but I'm skeptical. We're already at 9 a map, which Winged takes to 12. Gilded+Map Device is 15c for 7 Harbys; Winged+Map Device is 38c for 10 Harbys. You can try if it seems like a good idea.
City Square was amazing for this. Initially I was bummed out by how much I hated Metamorph Organs, since that seemed like a big part of the strat (originally had the double organs+extra reward points), but I hid organs almost immediately after trying them and hating them so much, the management and Tane's lab. On City Square, with the triple boss, that's 6 organs per map, but yeah, cba.
But even with that synergy removed, just Harbinger itself is amazing on City Square. Killing the boss is essentially like killing 4 normal Harbingers, as all 3 bosses drop loot, and there's a normal Harbi that joins the boss.
For compasses, it's the aforementioned Harby compass+Heist. About 2/3 of the farming I was using Essence Compass. Still not sure which I like more. Getting rid of meta and then using the 300+ built up Essences of Corruption with no compass definitely made the map rhythm a lot smoother. 4x stacks of Harby scarabs in the map device, 2x Heist and 2x Harby compasses on voidstones, roll 8 maps and go, just extremely low maintenance and quick. Using the compasses basically felt like 0 additional time/effort, but of course buying them is annoying, but easy enough to do in bulk.
In terms of loot, as mentioned, Harbinger is king. Fractruring+Exalt+Ancient+Annul+maps is a huge portion of the return. But Heist, Essence, and Exarch are great too given the near-zero currency investment for them, as well as how little time they add to each map.
My favorite part about the strat is how everything can be sold in Divines. All Harby shards = bulk sold in divines, deception contracts = divines, harvest juice = divines, searing invitations = divines, bulk sextants (although Sanctum contributes to this, more on that later) = divines, rogue markers = divines.
The strat just shits out a large number of stackable types of loot that all sell for pure Divines. Maybe it's just a personal preference, but this is a huge part of why I think the strat is so good (like I mentioned with Expedition League). I picked up almost no loot outside of the stuff I was selling for pure divines, just the occasional medium value div card.
Also, you get enough raw chaos from exarch+Harby to more than oversustain the Map Device cost. Nice since you never have to buy chaos; I just used excess chaos to add onto scarab/compass purchases.
The only things I sold for chaos were Catalysts and Blueprints. For blueprints, you really want to go through and sell all the valuable ones, then bulk sale the shit ones. TFT is a good place to learn that shit. All the bulk buy channels will give you idea of what people are buying to flip in bulk (like essences) or run for profit (blueprints).
As far as Sanctum goes, not much to say. Being an alch'n'go strat, Sanctum featured prominently of course, especially given the natural 4/8 map batches used in the strat. I'm sitting on 4 no-hit relics (hope I don't choke all 4), and a bunch of invocation/extra Sanctified ones. For loot, think most people know; Divine Orbs+Sextants+Stacked Decks. The latter 2 things being bulk sold at a premium for even more raw divines. The theme of my league, gloriously.
Can't believe I'm still typing, but obviously have to mention my build.
https://pobb.in/2b7tmWYqqTyE
I played my own take on Elementalist Cold DoT, going a low-life Petrified Blood variant. Personally, I think regen is the most broken thing by far in terms of making a build feel overpowered defensively, and I thought this was a really interesting way to achieve that. This is my first time using Petrified Blood, and honestly it fits into this build so well. Lets me run an extra aura (although normal builds would divine blessing it), the degen is negated entirely by the regen of the build, and it activates Pain Attunement.
As far as lvl 100, obviously not an achievement these days, but I never bothered with 5 ways (despite recommending them to friends all the time, great return on your investment in terms of character power) because I enjoy gaining exp and leveling naturally, and seeing how far a build can go.
I was really surprised that I could level to 100 so easily. In addition to the loot, Harbis are also great exp. I was getting about 2% exp every 3 maps at 99, and these are shitty, easy maps.
The build is not min-maxed at all. I really regret that, but I was just having fun playing the game, and I could feel that it was clearly good enough to comfortably coast to lvl 100. I had 4 deaths from 98.5 to 100; 1 to a crash, 1 to stopping (cardinal sin in this game) to talk in discord (rarely on disc when I play PoE), and 2 to some fucking teleporting spider Essence mob that didn't even have many Essence mobs and I'm still confused how I died to.
Essence is far and away the most dangerous part of the strat. I never came close to dying against hundreds of Metamorphs, even without looking at Metamorphh mods at all.
Vortex is obviously amazing against Harbinger. the AoE is satisfyingly pretty much the exact same size as a Harbinger spawn circle, so shit just spawns and immediately dies.
Also, I never gave up the Leap Slam+Frostblink leveling movement duo. Used it from leveling to 100. Was even using this sceptre for a while because of the attack speed (I like going for cheap weapons like this to buff movement skills that still have decent damage), but I bought the one I'm using for only 1.5div, and it was something silly like a 20% damage increase.
Going back to the "not min-maxed", pretty sure my gear and skill tree sucked. I only planned out a lvl 94 tree. My last 6 points were just kind of random throw-ins. Good enough where it still felt really solid, but surely there's a way to consolidate ~10-15 points from my tree to invest
I'm lazy and didn't put an Invocation of my relic the whole league. Pain Attunement to save a point, Glancing Blows for mediocre resiliency increase, Lethe Shade because I should probably be taking it anyways, or Magebane to allow for some Body Armour flexibility. All good Invocation options. I was just using a +3 lightning res relic the whole time, so I wouldn't have a jump-scare every mana siphoner spawn, and so I could afk in lightning mirages and Harby ball lightnings. After I hit 100 I switched to a 20% cold dot multi relic I got recently, and Mana Siphoner isn't really that scary. Life definitely shoots down fast, but easy to get away, instantly regen it, and if it was an actual problem, could just go Lethe Shade.
Playstyle is just leap/blink around shitting out auto-casted Vortexes everywhere, and right-clicking like a indiscriminately to get creeping frost down too. Vaal ColdSnap to speed up clear, cold snap + arcanist brand for single target (double curse + hypothermia proc, cold snap dmg is whatever). Also can clear most packs with Frostblink. Fun to Frostblink pack to pack.
Obvious upgrades I was too lazy for are lvl 4 Enlighten for another ~130hp (goes above 50% hp, but after first spellcast, goes to low-life for rest of map since no life flask). Alt quality or Awakened of some gems. I'm using a +1 sceptre and +1 amulet, so that's a very glaring opportunity as well (although I think my sceptre is solid, especially at 1.5div). Rings can have some elemental damage or incursion life. Body Armour can have some +gems corruption on another chest and get Magebane from Invocation. Get non-dogshit versions of eldritch implicits.
Oriath's End is a huge part of the build too. Wouldn't feel like a good mapping build without it, whereas it feels like a great mapping build with it. Might feel useless or minimally effective in some builds, but it's an all-star in this build. The explosions all shock, apply elementalist-buffed Exposure, get buffed by all the generic % ele dmg, and have their AoE buffed by Elementalist and passive nodes. Just a great use-case for an item that shines in some builds and is useless in others.
I really thought this was going to be a dogshit variant of the build not worth sharing, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Petrified Blood/LL angle went. The more regen the better (probably why I consider archmage BF+BB the most broken build I've played), and it would've been nice to get around 1100-1200 regen instead of 820. Still though, 36% of max hp per second is a nice level of regen to be at just from Immortal Flesh and a couple affixes.
Build is really conducive to the "never stop moving" layer of defense, which is arguably the single best one to have for mapping, as you just run around dropping instant cast Vortexes, and can instant cast, mid-animation Frostblink out of any danger. Between that and the regen, the build surpasses the somewhat decent looking max hit/ehp numbers in the PoB to easily coast to 100 while mapping.
Going back to the Atlas Tree, aside from the best (by far, for my style) tree that I shared above, this is something I ran a lot of before landing on that one, and a tree that I doubt anyone's used:
https://poeplanner.com/a/4um
Looks and is a somewhat typical Wandering Path tree. Harvest+Growing Hordes+Wandering Path is insane. Not many mechanics scale directly with pack-size/quant, but Harvest does very much so. This strat is just about using Harvest Compass while it was wayyyyyyyyy cheaper (blue/purple were 15c, yellow 80c when I was doing this) to make super-juiced Harvests for super cheap (rusted/polished growing hordes, relying on Wandering Path for good map quant/pack size). In addition to all that, Harvest is also one of, if not the, only mechanic that is better with Wandering Path than with notables.
After that base concept, I tried to find the best way to cheaply utilize the pack size provided in these maps. What I ended up on was Beyond and Exarch. Both far exceeded my expectations. The Exarch in this strat is completely different than the Exarch in the previous strat. It's not even comparable. 40% pack size just from the Exarch small nodes, 20-28% from growing hordes, and big base pack size from the 60% inc effect of map mods.
The size of Exarch packs and amount of spawns is just comical in this strat. Super fun seeing such huge packs spawn.
As for Beyond, it continues the theme of spawning comically large packs. A very underused mechanic (for good reason lol), I noticed that it's probably the only other mechanic besides Harvest that is better with Wandering Path. Just look at the small nodes and notables for Beyond. So much of the power is in the small nodes, and
The Beyond compass was also basically free when I was running them, otherwise it wouldn't have been worth it. But the looting and selling is extremely low maintenance, and the opportunity cost of running it was so small, it was a great addition to the strat.
Beyond bosses are the worst though. My god. Have to wait for them to activate after they spawn. Have to afk after you kill them for loot to spawn (like a damn Beastiary mob). And then the fucking Tainted currency doesn't even drop at the same time as the loot, you have to wait another second for that shit.
80% inc merging radius, 60% inc chance to spawn portal, 25% pack size from compass, 20-28% from growing hordes; the Beyond pack spawns are just as silly as the Exarch ones, and you're basically getting a boss guaranteed every map. Honestly, if a boss doesn't spawn, that's great since you had an entire map of huge Beyond pack spawns without having to wait for the Boss to drop loot.
Then the seemingly troll cherry on top, Ritual. This came about from the aforementioned theme of the build being maximizing the benefits of cheap pack size. Another feature of the tree, like many Wandering Path trees, is the 35% map dupe chance. This tree shits out maps.
I don't actually do the rituals. The point investment is just so low since I travel next to every ritual cluster though, so I took the +70% chance for rituals just as a source of extra packs to drop more maps and spawn more exarch/beyond shit.
Overall a fun strat, and unique. Only good for currency when Harvest sextants were way underpriced though (which was surprisingly for a while).
Because of how much I enjoyed the build I was playing, the rhythm of mapping and Sanctum, and the currency I was making, I ended up playing way more than I normally do. Usually I just fill out my atlas, kill the bosses, push a character to ~98, flesh out my gear to a ~30-60 div range, and then be done with the league or try out 1-2 other builds. It's why I thought I'd never farm a Mageblood or hit 100. Ended up doing both. Seems to be a common theme from posts I saw throughout the league; Sanctum really hit the spot for some people.
After the Mageblood, got 70div, 100-115 after I sell Essence/Heist stuff. Am I right in assuming that Shockwave Totem not only is the "best" build for no-hit runs at that budget, but also makes pretty good use of Mageblood?
Here's some images, including the 3 Full Fracturing Orb drops. I wasn't expecting to get any of these. Got the first one after about 30-50 maps (can see in the screenshot I'm still early 97, and first map with the 4x shard drop is beginning of 97). Assumed that was super lucky and no way it'd happen again. The last 2 happened in the last 32 maps I did lol (obscenely lucky, but still only 20 divines at the time, plenty of drops worth more than that). Definitely gonna have a soft spot for Harbinger going forward.
https://imgur.com/a/u3MTyoY Fracturing Shards from the 3x City Square Boss+Boss-accompanying harby
https://imgur.com/a/oUu6jRT
https://imgur.com/a/NRWcXe5 Even one would be lucky in the amount of maps I did (250 ish). Getting 3 was wild, even if it's not much $$$ compared to a crazy chase drop.
https://imgur.com/a/pqjAPih Doubt I'll ever play enough again in a league to farm another of these. Out of town for a week starting tomorrow, definitely want to try a couple builds out with it before next league.
Damn, day off and vacation tomorrow, super baked and seriously typed all this shit (if you read all the way until now, I'm sorry), could've farmed another Fracturing Orb by now. If I was playing that is; bought Mageblood and logged off for 3 days straight, should've had a character ready for it lmaooo. Lmk if something is way better than Shockwave.

Hi,
I've inhaled a large ammount of copium and recreated Impending Doom Pathfinder basing on youtube videos (steelmage version) and poeninja. While it's very tanky (as expected) it feels ZDPS at the same time (killing uber exarch takes several long minutes). Would you kind people look at my POB and suggest some upgrades if possible? I probably made some rookie mistakes, especially in the area of cooldown recovery/ cast speed, but this build has so many complex mechanics that i'd rather seek guidance before my brain vaporizes.
POB: https://poe.ninja/pob/Uyg

Hey everyone! I’m fortunate enough to have a Nimis and Mageblood and I’m looking for a build that utilizes both to completely disrespect bosses and maps. Anyone have any suggestions? I’ve browsed PoENinja and I’m not seeing anything that trips my trigger. Thanks!

Last night I got lucky and found a divine shrine and now currently have 44 raw divines. Earlier in the league I bought a Nimis because I wanted to play with it later before the league was super dead and prices would go wonky. I currently have 3 characters (94 Omni TS Deadeye, 94 frost totem hiero, and 95 poison SRS Necro) and I'm not sure what to do to optimize my fun with my divines and Nimis.
I prefer mapping over bossing as I'm bad at mechanics.
My profile with current characters: https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/Ergosum1321/characters
I'm not good at guessing what is good now and possibly will get gutted next season, and anything with a rough guide would be ideal as I'm not the best at simply looking at poeninja and tweaking to fit my wants.
Thank you!

I am in process of transitioning an Occultist over to CoC FR. Here is my current build: https://poe.ninja/pob/UR1.
I am piecing it together from poeninja, but not sure what all I am missing. I have about 25 div remaining for upgrades. Any suggestions? Mainly just want to explore the build and run some guardian maps/sanctum.

I just wanted to shine some light on the state of melee throughout 3.20 and my curiosity of whether or not its going to get real help going forward. 3.20 introduced some absolutely major changes to certain meta melee skills, notable Lightning Strike which received huge nerfs between the elusive nerf as well as it loosing a ton of projectiles making its clear pretty bad. its important to note that other skills, like boneshatter and fortify duration stackers received a decent nerf in the removal of mantra of flames.
I bring this up because to my knowledge 3.20 didn't really spawn any new melee option, yet saw a major decline in melee skills. using poeninja (which i understand is flawed due to its limited entry list) looking at top skill plays for softcore, the most played melee skill by popularity is around the 20th most popular being flicker strike. please note i am not including cyclone which does break the top 10 because its frankly not being played as a melee build as over 75% of the builds running it are either playing CoC or CwC which makes them more akin to a mage build. Flicker did receive some pretty major assistance with the relic system resulting in some frankly insane damage spec options, which will disappear in 3.21 and imo cut its playrate down.
Beyond flicker however, there seems to be only really 2 other melee skills that are popular this league, the old reliable boneshatter, a favorite of hc/ssf for its ease of damage scaling that lets you focus on other things, and smite, the seeming replacement for Lightning Strike which got a juicy new toy in the form of vaal smite that in SC currently, 80% of smite builds are using. i do think both flicker strike and smite will fall off next league as their novelty of their new vaal skill drops off, but that sort of leaves melee in a spot where its imo projected to get an even lower play rate than it already has.
In the interest of talking about everything major getting played, i should bring up the only other major play style for melee atm seems to be an attribute stacker, abusing various uniques and battlemage's cry. this is a super high investment for melees and is sort of the late game do everything build.
with all this in mind, do you guys see melee getting changes to the next league? im not really a fan of the state of melee only having a fraction of a handful of good skill gem options, with the vast majority in the "terrible and not worth it or throw it onto a replica alberon's build and ignore the major damage downside of said skill". i'd love to see melee get some more help to alot of its more weak skill gems that haven't really seen the limelight in a while/ever.
edit: i should point out 3.20 added two new melee skills, but neither really saw significant play past the opening week.

I am planning on doing a strength stacker Berserker (like the billion others on poeninja) and thought I wanted to go about it a bit differently by using a squire and a juicy 5link shaper weapon with fire dmg per str instead of the synth weapon + Redblade Banner combo.
The idea was to increase the usefulness of Battlemages Cry with the warcry mastery and with Cry Wolf granted by medium clusters /megalomaniacs.
Does this work? Eg. Mastery min 10 + 20% from cry wolf so always generate 12 power?
Cant PoB because it freezes my PC since recently

Hey everyone, so I've never made a build from scratch and I kind of want to mess around before I hang it up for the league but wanted to see if anyone thought it'd be a lost cause before I even started. I'm really fond of the sandstorm visage/trypanon interaction and cobbled together a spark build with it that ended up being much better than I anticipated. I had a really nicely rolled incandescent heart drop and 6 linked it really fast, I was looking at builds that use it on poeninja and nothing really popped out as something I'd want to build. So I was trying to think of weird things I could do that also included my nimis ring, I've also never built a low life ES char so I was thinking about something like cast while channeling cyclone/fireball with nimis and sandstorm visage/trypanon to always crit but I'm entirely unfamiliar with cast while channeling and not even sure this would be worthwhile to try. I'd like to be able to take it to the endgame but any guidance on what ascendancy would be best for such a character or any tips on what direction to take it would be really nice, thank you.

So yesterday on my lvl 40 jugg I found an CastWhileChanneling support and was hyped for some stupid fun. After some thoughts I want to create an cyclon-cwc-desecrate-volatile dead setup, I got all the gems I need already.
Necro for sure, but I'm not very on point and on poeninja I found some poet pens and alot of spellslinger ones. I gues it's just a very outdated setup or would this idea just be not working?
Maybe as a note, I'm not a professional Poe player and spend most of the time playing Poe on the wiki reading what gems actually do lol

I've lucked out and dropped one the other day and been sitting on 2 scriptures for a while that I'd like to try turning into a ring at some point. I've checked the sub for builds and a lot of them just rely on stuff that you can't force in SSF like mandatory uniques in almost all cases (covenant, astral projector, void batteries and badge etc.), many of which I've not seen a single time since I started playing the game (or since they've been reworked in the case of Dialla).
Had my eye on probably stormbrand with a weapon swap to dying light for sanctums, though most builds on poeninja that do these use a helmet that I can only assume is from mirror service because just hitting suffixes with essence slams takes me thousands of attempts on craft of exile (correct me if I'm wrong, I've already made the base and did like a dozen attempts because copium). The other build I had my eyes on was Spark since I got a pretty good wand for that (essence proj speed, +1 and T1 added lightning, waiting for multimod) and dropped my first Inpulsa the day I also got MB, linked it yesterday so I was looking forward to that too. I have the MTX but since spark is kind of on the bad side for visual clarity still I wasn't sure if I'd want to go that route for a no hit run. I do have rings for cold conversion.
I've got almost 100 alva missions to run so I might try to get slave drivers and give traps a try, otherwise it feels like a waste to have MB and not make use of the free cast/attackspeed. Also no luck crafting a bow yet for anything like TS (I do have omni), I do have a T1 added fire fracture on a decent base but I believe omni TS usually does phys bows with conversion?
Any obvious contenders I'm overlooking here, is Stormbrand fine with just a 6 link and dying light ( +MB onslaught, cast speed and crit)? Never played brands before so I have no idea what to expect from it

Howdy all, I started Seismic trap into this Poison BV build that I enjoy but would like to transition into another build for Shadow. I would say I have a decent budget, 50+ divines or more if I sell of poison BV stuff. I also have a HH.
The builds I have seen on PoeNinja include the following: Non-Poison BV with Oblits or possible cold conversion
Ephemeral Edge Flickerstrike
Spark with Nimis
I know there is Hexblast and FB, but I am not really feeling those at the moment. I am also open to other suggestions! I would like to be farming very juiced maps and potentially getting lvl 100 in the process. With my Poison BV, I die quite a bit to stacking a lot of alter debuffs and get booped, which is to be expected with my current build. I am also open to any advice for my current build!
POB For my current build: https://pastebin.com/vGFqfjYD

https://pastebin.com/59VbxRNC
First time playing RF and I've gotten to this point by basically just copying the most common options on poeninja. At the high end there is a wide variety of variants and I don't have the experience to understand how to squeeze out more dps. Any suggestions?

Hi there,
Just starting second char for pure fun, HoT autobomber Last time when tried, it was old time style with HoT trigerring explosions from HoI, with dps maaaaybe fiting just for white maps
Atm testing phase in Ossuary A10 before Kitava to avoid res penalty atm (lvl 75 lol)
So far works nice, but still equiped just 1 ring (Storm Secret), because already playing piano with life flask for dealing with self inflicted dmg from 1 ring and without ring is just not fun
What is used there for mitigating dmg from rings to finaly skip flask piano?
Picked Bastion of elements ascendancy and Primal Aegis helps a lot, but I am sure I am missing something ;)
Lightning res is ofc caped even with "Annihilating Light" equiped
Thx
(Not folowing any guide, just took peek on 5 char on poeninja to get "inspiration" )
Edit: not one of them got any life flask, thats why q what am I missing

I'm playing a Spark Inquisitor in a small private league. My goal is to build towards no-hit Sanctum runs.
I have been looking at cluster builds for achieving high speed & duration projectiles for clearing Sanctum around corners. Naturally this also requires clearing T14/16 maps. But my overall damage is very low, projected 360K DPS at level 90.
The top builds on PoeNinja are many millions of DPS, and they are all heavily aura-stacking. I'm trying to figure out what I can achieve in without access to lots of reservation clusters. I haven't been able to pinpoint where the core of their damage comes from. A bit from Nebulis, some from running RF. But nothing that increases damage by 10x.
Currently I just finished Act 10 and am level 70, but leveling very quickly in yellow maps. Here is my expected PoB at level 90, assuming no new gear is found. Any suggestions about ways to boost damage are appreciated, as well as reaching 100% crit for guaranteed freezing enemies in Sanctum.
https://pobb.in/A3SGSyXQWIfx
https://poe.ninja/pob/Snh
I already have a lvl 97 for farming (everything but uber-level) and can complete most other Sanctum challenge runs. I have plenty of harvest juice to reroll clusters for better notables. I have a bit of experience in crafting, and related experience farming Divines, Aisling, essences, etc.
Any input is appreciated, thanks!

As the title says. I'm looking to make some upgrades to my TS but not sure how to prioritize. For the most part I was following Fuzzy Duckzy on YT and afterwards started looking on PoENinja to get some inspiration on what gear mods to look out for and etc. All criticism is welcomed and appreciated! Also if someone wouldn't mind taking a look at my config as well. I've never been really good at setting those up so I just copied Fuzzy Duckzy. Thanks in advance!
https://pastebin.com/JNJ1pnkR

On poeninja, I see a few different poison spark builds on poeninja and through searching guides. I have a few items prepared for the build: Mageblood, nimis, original sin, and ashes of the stars. I also have a +2 proj/+2 duration Cherrubim's Maleficence and a +2 max cold res/15% energy shield relic. I only have ~10 divs remaining at this point.
With this in mind, are there pros/cons to go one variant or another? Is one exceptionally better than others? Mainly looking to rush guardian maps/sanctums and some maven invitations.