Early Game Goal
Our goals in the early game are to establish our skill setups by socketing, linking and colouring our gear appropriately and to start leveling our Gems.
Since we are wearing "Act Gear" at this point, we need to focus on upgrades to get our necessary Attribute Requirements and cap our Resistances.
Milestone 1 - Off-Hand Gems
Purchase two Wands that have 3 Blue Sockets from a Vendor. Buy 6 Impending Doom Supports and put them in your Weapon Swap. Then swap back to your main hand. When these gems reach level 20, sell them to the vendor with 1 Gemcutter's Prism each to get a level 1 gem back with 20 quality. Level these back up to 20 and finally use a Vaal Orb on them or alternatively double corrupt them with a level 3 Alva gem room called: Doryani's Institute. You might want to Vaal Orb your first set without quality first as a level 21 gem is a massive DPS boost!
Milestone 2 - Get decent Rare Gear
After the campaign, you encounter a steep difficulty increase, which becomes a problem unless you upgrade your suboptimal gear into something more appropriate. This is where random currency you dropped during the campaign comes in. Spend all the Chaos Orbs you have on gear upgrades so you can progress through the game.
You are looking for Life on every single gear piece, as well as enough Resistances to cap them at 75%.
A good trick to get some Life on your items is using: Screaming Essences of Greed on items that are already appropriately linked and coloured.
Milestone 3 - Get your Sockets, Colours and Links in order!
After you have some starter gear, make sure you can use all your Gems. You need to use your Jeweller's Orbs, Orbs of Fusing and Chromatic Orbs to adjust your items sockets appropriately to slot the gems into them. Use the Skill Gem Section to check if you have the right colours on your items!
Milestone 4 - Flasks
Next up, inspect your Flasks and see if they are adequate for the content you are farming. The base flasks you want at this point are:
- Divine Life Flask
- Quicksilver Flask
- Silver Flask
- Granite Flask
- Jade Flask
Use Orb of Transmutations, Orb of Alterations and Orb of Augmentations to craft some important Suffix mods onto your 3 utility flasks:
- Increased Evasion during Flask effect
- Increased Movement Speed during Flask effect
Prefixes are not super important right now, but do check the gear-sets if you want to craft perfect flasks. For Life Flasks we want one Life Flask to be semi-instant for quick recovery, with protection from Bleeds, similar to this one: Divine Life Flask of Allaying.
Milestone 5 - Vixen's Entrapment
The Vixen's Entrapment Unique allows you to automate Curse application, increasing quality of life, damage and survivability. Whispers of Doom and Vixen's Entrapment your Curse limit is set to 3, so if a 4th Curse is applied it will overwrite a Curse, forcing a Doom Blast to trigger. Because of this interaction you must be wary of how your gems are socketed into your Gloves. The Curse in the top left most socket is overwritten, and does not affect the monster, therefore you must choose between Punishment or Enfeeble depending on whether you want more damage or survivability. Should you find yourself unable to afford them at this stage, you can continue using the Poisonous Concoction setup until you farm sufficient currency to obtain them.
Milestone 6 - Tabula Rasa
Getting an early 6-link can be expensive, but Tabula Rasa provides a cheaper solution. Going from a 4-link to a 6-link almost doubles your damage, and is therefore a complete gamechanger. Once you do pick one up make sure to allocate the Life Mastery granting: 15% increased maximum Life if there are no Life Modifiers on Equipped Body Armour. In order to get the Currency to buy a Tabula Rasa, use the Chaos Orb Recipe.
Milestone 7 - Syndicate Unveils
While doing Syndicate Missions find Elreon, or remove other members from the Syndicate until he shows up. Unveil the following gear slots for these crafts specifically and all other unveils afterwards:
- Unveil Boots for 20% increased Movement Speed & #% chance to gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on Kill
- Unveil Belts for Regenerate# Energy Shield per second while a Rare or Unique Enemy is Nearby
- Unveil Elreon's Veiled Rings for Non-Channeling Skills have -(x-x) to Total Mana Cost
There are a variety of other useful veiled crafts you will gain in the process, obtaining them should be much easier as the veiled item required to unlock the crafts is not specific to a syndicate member.
Milestone 8 - Amulet
- Purchase an Amulet with +x% to Damage over Time Multiplier and some Elemental Resistances/Strength depending on which you need.
- When you get an Amulet that has one of these mods, craft Life and anoint Toxic Strikes:
- Amber Oil
- Clear Oil
- Crimson Oil
Milestone 9 - Leper's Alms
Leper's Alms is a unique shield which grants a ton of Evasion and Energy Shield. The Energy Shield is very helpful early to ensure that you are able to cast your Divine Blessing Support aura setup without issues. Evasion rating granted by the item bolsters your avoidance, making it less likely for you to die as you progress the atlas and work towards improving the rest of your gear. The Ailment Duration gives you a substantial damage boost in encounters where you need it the most, it allows you to stack up more Poisons on bosses.
Shared Suffering is a mechanic unique toLeper's Alms, it causes all damage from your hits to cause Elemental Ailments you are suffering. For example: if your character is shocked, a hit will inflict that Shock to the enemy and remove it from you, which is a great way to mitigate Ailments early on where you might not necessarily have the gear to deal with them yet.
Milestone 9 - Doedre's Scorn
The Doedre's Scorn unique is a great way to get access to a lot of added Chaos damage early. It is a great upgrade to get early as it is generally very cheap and can make progressing through maps easier thanks to the DPS it provides. Stay mindful however of your elemental resistances as with every unique you add to the build, it adds stress on the rest of your gear to provide all of the defensive stats needed to stay alive.
Milestone 10 - Apep's Rage
The Apep's Rage Unique wand is a massive DPS boost as it provides the equivalent to a level 14 to 18 Added Chaos Damage Support gem. It also has a ton of Cast speed, and makes your Poisons deal damage faster. Faster Poisons means the damage feels more instant, but it effectively does the same total damage per Poison. The downside to this unique is the fact that you lose 40 mana when you use a skill, this effect is completely offset by Eldritch Battery. Note that the rolls on this wand have a high variance, when purchasing make sure to get a decent roll that is within your budget.
Once you complete these Milestones you'll be able to farm red maps with Altars and Delirium. Ensure you have checked all the previous milestones before moving forward.
You are focusing on defences like Spell Suppression and try to further increase your damage with Uniques and clever gearing choices.
Milestone 1 - Divergent Herald of Agony
Divergent Herald of Agony provides additional global Chance to Poison. This is important because it enables you to save passive skills leading to Skittering Runes since you can now swap your Amulet anointment to it. Make sure to adapt your passive skill tree once to the midgame variant once you do!
Milestone 2 - Dawnbreaker
The Dawnbreaker is the best shield for your build as it shifts up to 20% of incoming Physical damage into Fire damage. This is a very powerful way of managing Physical damage since mitigating elemental damage is more feasible for our build. Moving forward, your goal should be to approach 100% conversion of Physical damage to elemental through your gear choices. Once achieved, this shift remarkably bolsters your defensive capabilities. When purchasing one of these shields, prioritize obtaining a good roll on the affix that grants a % of Physical Damage taken as Fire Damage.
Milestone 3 - Spell Suppression
Suppression adds a % chance to reduce incoming spell damage and their effects by 50%. This caps at 100%, halving the spell damage you take. Key sources of suppression for this build are found on Boots, Helmet and the Passive Skill Tree. This affix is specific to Evasion or hybrid Evasion bases. An easy approach is getting Slink Boots and/or Lion Pelt and using Harvest Reforge Life, Essences, or crafting with Expedition NPC Rog to get high life and suppression items. Keep in mind that you can allocate the Chance to Suppress Spell Damage is Lucky spell suppression mastery as a temporary solution until you achieve full cap.
Milestone 4 - 6-link Lightning Coil
The Lightning Coil is your best in slot Body Armour as it makes 50% of the incoming physical damage to be taken as lightning damage instead. In case the Lightning Coil is currently beyond your budget, you can temporarily go for a rare armor option instead.
The ideal Body Armour has the following stats:
- + to Maximum Life
- % chance to Suppress Spell Damage
- % increased Evasion
- +% to Resistances
- (5–6)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire Damage & (5–6)% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Lightning Damage (crafted)
Milestone 5 - Final Flask setup
Flasks are an extremely important part of your build's avoidance, mitigation and Mana cost reduction to cast your Spells, properly invest into them.
Grab item level 70+ Utility Flask bases listed below and roll for the x% increased Charge Recovery Prefix.
- Ruby Flask
- Topaz Flask
- Sapphire Flask
- Quicksilver Flask
The following are the Suffix modifiers you need on your Flasks.
- % increased Evasion rating during Effect
- % increased Movement Speed during Effect
- % increased Cast Speed during Effect
- 25% reduced Mana Cost of Skills during Effect (craft obtained by unveiling Cinderswallow Urn)
Go to your crafting bench and craft Used when Charges reach full on your 3 Utility Flasks to automate their use. This will cost you 5 Instilling Orb and 5 Glassblower's Bauble each.
At this stage, assuming you've crafted your Flasks, you should have a consistent 100% uptime on your Elemental Flasks. This ensures that you can depend on their substantial damage reduction, Mana cost reduction and the resistances they offer. Now you can spec out of Master Surgeon in favour of Nature's Boon as it provides you with additional effect for the flasks you just crafted. If you really enjoy the recovery Master Surgeon provides you can always keep it instead if you prefer.
Milestone 6 - Cluster Jewel
Oblivion Heart is the only mandatory cluster in this setup as it, provides 6% increased Flask Effect Duration and other bonuses required to have permanent flask uptime. The notable passives you should aim to acquire for this cluster are:
Glyph Eye, providing a 12% increased Chaos Damage. The notable passives you should aim to acquire for this cluster are:
Bramble Ornament, offering 12% increased Chaos Damage Over Time. The notable passives you should aim to acquire for this cluster are:
Milestone 7 - Stygian Vise
Your Belt is a great place to get the Strength needed to equip all of your red/blue Skill Gems, as well as a ton of additional Cooldown Recovery Rate and some very helpful modifiers that allow your flasks to have more consistent uptime. The Cooldown Recovery rate is a stat which provides a ton of damage as it allows Impending Doom to trigger on more casts. This craft can be expensive so make sure that before you begin crafting, you check on the trade website whether there is one that will suit your build and satisfy your resistance and attribute requirements. As an alternative look for a cheaper base such as the Leather Belt or Heavy Belt with a combination of the affixes mentioned below, including one Flask modifier, Life, and an open suffix.
Find or purchase an item level 82 Stygian Vise. Use Harvest Reforge Life or a Deafening Essence of Envy until you achieve a combination of the following modifiers:
- +# to maximum Life
- % increased Flask Charges gained
- % increased Flask Effect Duration
- % reduced Flask Charges used
- % to Fire/Cold/Lightning/Chaos Resistance
- +# to Strength
Make sure to leave an open Suffix modifier for the following craft:
- 12% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate
For your Abyss Jewel, grab one that has x% chance to gain Phasing for 4 seconds on Kill and one or more of the following modifiers:
- +x to Strength
- +x to maximum Life
- Resistances
- % increased Damage over Time while holding a Shield
- Enemies Withered by you have-2% to all Resistances
If you have an open prefix purchase a Hunter's Exalted Orb and use it on your Belt in hopes of getting one of the following prefix modifiers:
- % increased maximum Life
- % increased Chaos Damage
Milestone 8 - Eldritch Implicits
Your Helmet and Boots can all have 2 Eldritch Implicits each. These Implicits can be added by applying Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds currency.
Eldritch Currency can be obtained from Altar Rewards within Maps, which becomes available after selecting either the Searing Exarch or Eater of Worlds Beacon on the Map Device. These currencies come in various tiers, with examples of the lowest tier including Lesser Eldritch Ember and Lesser Eldritch Ichor. If you're not happy with a roll, you have the option to reroll it using another Eldritch Currency. However, it's advisable not to overspend on rerolling, as keep in mind that you'll perfect the Implicits in the endgame milestones.
Helmet:
Searing Exarch: #% increased Despair/Temporal Chains Curse Effect
Eater of Worlds: #% increased Duration of Ailments on Enemies
Boots:
Searing Exarch: #% increased Action Speed
Eater of Worlds: #% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate
Milestone 9 - The Balance of Terror
The The Balance of Terror is a jewel that drops from the final boss in the Forbidden Sanctum. It comes with 2 random modifiers, one of which grants 20-25% Cooldown Recovery Rate if you've cast Temporal Chains in the last 10 seconds. This Cooldown Recovery Rate translates to a significant 20% or more increase in DPS. Once you acquire and equip this jewel, ensure that Temporal Chains is included in your main 6-link setup, as the bonus won't apply if it's triggered by Vixen's Entrapment.
Milestone 10 - Check your Gear for Weaknesses
As we enter the high-cost endgame upgrades, it's crucial to ensure that you've optimized all your gear pieces that can be easily upgraded. Confirm that your Resistance Caps and Spell Suppression are already ingrained habits, and remember to double-check them after adjusting your gear setup. This attention to detail will serve you well as you progress further.
Now that your character is properly geared for endgame, there's still the big and expensive upgrades left. These take you from an "ok endgame build" to a "monster slaying machine".
To be able to follow Endgame Milestones, definitely check out the Meta Section to be up to date about currency-making in the current league, you are going to need it!
Milestone 1 - Awakened Gems
The easiest upgrade you can make is going to be Awakened Gems and Alternate Qualities. Purchase the following Awakened Gems:
- Awakened Unbound Ailments Support
- Awakened Spell Cascade Support
- Awakened Deadly Ailments Support
- Awakened Void Manipulation Support
Purchase the following Alternate Quality Gems:
- Divergent Temporal Chains
- Divergent Herald of Agony
- Divergent Inspiration Support
- Anomalous Increased Duration Support
- Anomalous Despair
- Divergent Malevolence
- Divergent Plague Bearer
Milestone 2 - Taste of Hate
The Taste of Hate Unique Flask will provide you with the Physical Damage taken As Cold Damage required to cap out at 100% on top of the 20% less cold damage taken. When looking for rolls, you want to get as close to 15% Physical Damage taken As Cold Damage as possible, the other roll does not matter so don't worry about that.
Milestone 3 - Rings
We use this slot to fill out as much of the stats that we are missing as possible. This makes this slot unique to your current setup as that might change depending on the stats you have on your other items. The best way to fill this slot is to look for a combination of the stats you are currently missing on the Trade website, as crafting with Essences most likely costs way more than one you can find there. Try look for a ring with 3 good suffixes, then you can craft life and use it as is, or craft Suffixes Cannot be Changed before using a Veiled Chaos Orb. Block +# to Maximum Mana before unveiling Life, finally craft Non-Channeling Skills have -7 to Total Mana Cost to finish the ring. Look for a combination of the following suffixes on a ring while keeping in mind the build has many available Jewel Sockets where you can also fill out remaining resistance and Attribute requirements:
- % increased Cast Speed
- % to Fire Resistance
- % to Cold Resistance
- % to Lightning Resistance
- % to Chaos Resistance
- +# to Intelligence/Strength
- % to all Elemental Resistances
- % to Damage over Time Multiplier
Keep in mind that your rings should have an available prefix modifier for the following craft: "Non-Channeling Skills have -7 to Total Mana Cost." This step is crucial, as it's necessary to lower the Mana cost of all your skills to zero for your build to function.
Milestone 4 - Amulet
Much like the rings, the amulet also serves as a slot to fill out some remaining stats. Keep in mind that your amulet should have an available prefix modifier for the following craft: "Non-Channeling Skills have -7 to Total Mana Cost." This step is crucial, as it's necessary to lower the mana cost of all your skills to zero for your build to function. Make sure to first check the trade website in case you can find something with suitable stats at a reasonable price.
Milestone 5 - Corrupted Lightning Coil
The Impending Doom Support greatly benefits from higher gem levels, making an implicit corruption that increases these levels a substantial DPS boost. You can search for a pre-6-linked or unlinked armour and proceed to socket and link it using Tainted Orb of Fusing and Tainted Jeweller's Orb. However, be aware that this approach may come with a considerable currency cost.
Suitable Corruption Implicits:
- +2 to Level of Socketed AOE Gems
- +1 to Level of Socketed Gems
Milestone 6 - Helmet
The helmet slot is going to provide you with a massive amount of Curse Effect which translates to a ton of additional damage.
The most important prefixes on your Helmet are:
- +(90–99)to maximum Life
- % increased Armour and Evasion
- +(43–95)to Evasion Rating/Armour +(29–33)to maximum Life
The most important suffixes on your Helmet are:
- 61-70% increased Duration of Ailments you inflict while Focused
- % chance to Suppress Spell Damage
- #% to Lightning/Fire/Cold Resistance
The most important eldritch implicits on helmets are:
- #% increased Temporal Chains/Despair Curse Effect (Searing Exarch)
- #% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire Damage (Eater of Worlds)
The most important Lab enchant is:
- 15% increased Temporal Chains/Despair Curse Effect
Milestone 7 - Boots
Boots are one of the few places where you can craft additional Cooldown Recovery Rate as an Eldritch Implicit. Ideally you want to upgrade this modifier as high as you can as it is a massive multiplier for your damage.
Milestone 8 - Jewels
Rare Jewels
In the remaining Jewel sockets you can slot Rare Jewels to grant additional Life and damage . The stats we are looking for on these can be any combination of the following:
- % increased Cooldown Recovery Rate
- +# Chaos damage to Spells
- % increased maximum Life
- % increased Chaos Damage
- % increased Cast Speed
- Damaging Ailments deal damage% faster
- % increased Damage over Time
- +to Strength
- % to all Elemental Resistances
- % increased Poison Duration, % chance to Poison on Hit
- % increased Damage over Time while holding a Shield
- % to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier
Milestone 9 - Cluster Jewel
Glyph Eye, providing a 12% increased Chaos Damage. The notable passives you should aim to acquire for this cluster are:
Bramble Ornament, offering 12% increased Chaos Damage Over Time. The notable passives you should aim to acquire for this cluster are:
Oblivion Heart, provides 6% increased Flask Effect Duration. The notable passives you should aim to acquire for this cluster are:
You've reached the end of our Milestones, congratulations!
Every upgrade beyond this point is not simple enough to serve you in a static format like this. This is because most of your upgrades going forward will heavily depend on the choices you made. However, that doesn't mean that your journey ends here. If you want to go further, check out other people's versions of the build on poe.ninja. They give great insights and new creative ideas!
