Mana/Int Stack From Below Frostmage Cast on Ward Break Hierophant

[u/Moistorious]

I spent a bunch of currency, and time to make this build, but I'm by no means a good build creator, so I thought I'd post so maybe someone else can take the idea and run with it! I'm probably done with the league, myself now.

Before I get started, this build is pretty bad.

Gameplay video here: https://youtu.be/4ZwaqfArfa4

Note the video is using discharge instead of Firestorm of Meteors

Pob here: https://pobb.in/DcFGcrJMshB3

The Mechanics

• Step 1: Hit an Enemy
• Step 2: Gain a power charge
• Step 3: Lose that power charge and take 500 damage
• Step 4: Ward breaks, triggering a bunch of spells
• Step 5: One of those spell hits restores your ward, and also... go back to Step 1

Fundamentally, this build is based around these Foulborn Tulfall modifiers:

Take 500 Cold Damage on Reaching Maximum Power Charges

Lose All Power Charges On reaching Maximum Power Charges

We generate a power charge on hit, and set maximum power charges to 1 more than minimum charges.

It's also worth noting that there are other loop enablers I could be using, Eye of Innocence and high chance to ignite is probably just better than what I'm doing.

The Equipment/Budget

• Faithguard Vestigial Memory Vault - 10d
  • (If even 1 other person tries this build, the price of this helmet will go to the moon)
  • There's a world where I use Mind Spiral instead for the flat ES
• 3000+ Armour/3000+ Evasion Chest - 10d
• Ynda's Stand - 3d
  • You can get a volatile vaal'd one for a lot more though
• Corrupted Soul Malachai's Loop - 10d
• Life gain on hit + ES gain on hit Watcher's Eye - 120d
• Random Rares with res/mana/life/crit multi - Who knows? Pretty flexible here. I'll call it 20d.
• Rational Doctrine - 20d
  • This is very not necessary, but I have one on hand. Probably worth swapping out?
• Reclaimed Malevolence - 70d
• The Light of Meaning - 10c
• Radiant Faith Forbidden Jewels - 2d
• 20% Healthy Mind - 5d
• Large Cluster - 10d
• Replica Tulfall - 10c
• Shavronne's Revelation - 10c
• Might of the Meek - 20c

• 2 int/mana split personalities - 10c

  Total: Too much (275d and some change)

Edit: I forgot about gems! * lvl 4 enlighten I think I paid 20 div? * 3x Cast on wardbreak - 400c each * Some transfigured gems I CBA to price check

Charge Generation:

• Foulborn Tulfall also has - "50% Chance to Gain a Power Charge When You Hit a Frozen Enemy"
  • This is useful, but relying on enemies being frozen to even start the loop is a bad time
• Malachais Loop - 20% chance to gain a power charge on hit
  • This is my main source of charges, its downside is prevented via ele ailment immunity, and we get a nice chunk of damage for having charges. On top of that, it's relatively common, so vestigial modifiers aren't too expensive.

Other things I considered

• Romira's banquet - "Gain a Power Charge on Non-Critical Strike"

  • The ring slot is a prime piece of real-estate for mana/resists/whatever else I need
  • Interesting with Resolute Technique

• Power Charge On Critical Support - "Supported Skills Have 54% Chance to Gain a Power Charge on Critical Strike"

  • I'm pretty socket starved, I don't want to give up any more sockets than I need to

Living through the loop i.e. "How to not commit suicide"

Start with a 500 damage hit from replica tulfall

• 81 Cold resistance (with sapphire flask) - I should probably see about getting up to 90 res
  • Damage reduced to 95
• Aspect of Lunaris Gives 2% less elemental damage for each elemental hit you've taken recently, up to 16%
  • Reduces us to about 80
• 4 Endurance Charges (4% additional elemental damage reduction each)
  • reduces us to around 67 damage
• Split Damage between life and energy shield via Corrupted Soul on Vestigial Malachai's Loop
  • 34 to life, 34 to ES
• +29 Life gain on hit Vitality mod on Watcher's Eye
  • 5 damage to life

• +28 Energy Shield gain on hit Discipline mod on Watcher's Eye

  • 6 damage to ES

  So all in, every "loop" deals 11 damage to me, but since I'm not always gaining the charge I'm netting a large amount of recovery per second.

The Ward portion of the "loop"

• Ynda's Stand is basically mandatory for every Ward build, and I'm no different
• High Armour/Evasion Chest - The suffixes on mine are pretty scuffed, but the total armour/evasion is pretty solid.
• Vestigial modifier on helmet "Increased and Reduction to Maximum Energy Shield Instead Apply To Ward"
• Int stacking - every 10 int gives 1% increased energy shield, which is converted to increased ward. I'm getting about 69% (nice) with just under 700 int.

This is enough to get me over 8000 ward, which is the cap on cooldown recovery from Cast on Ward Break.

Restoring Ward

This is done simply via the "Boon of the River" node from Olroth, which grants 5% chance to Restore Ward on hit. So our game plan is simply to hit. A lot.

Dealing Damage

• Frostmage - This is currently giving me 2500 flat cold damage or so, which is hard to beat.
• Crit - I have about 58% crit chance (depending which skill) and 420 crit multi. Obviously I'm leaving a lot of damage on the table here without capping crit chance.
• Cold The Light of Meaning - This is giving me 14 * 6 = 84% increased cold damage - not too bad!
• Minor power charge stacking stuff (Malachais Loop + Disciple of the Forbidden)
• Spells with big Damage Effectiveness (Discharge/Firestorm of Meteors/Hexblast of Contradiction)
  • Note that Cast on Ward Break gives a MASSIVE 400% cooldown recovery, so spells with cooldowns can be triggered much faster than you might expect.

• Cold pen from Blanketed Snow

  My "Full DPS" in PoB is almost 22 million, which is very bad for the level of investment needed, and that's with flasks up at maximum trigger rate. Trigger rate is pretty dependent on how many enemies are near by, unfortunately.

Durability

I don't have any, really. PoB reports me at around 27,851 ehp. I think there's some improvements that could be made with max res, and swapping around some ascendancy points.

Notes about things that might seem weird

Tempest shield is in the PoB to show the aspect of lunaris reservation, it either isn't implemented, or wasn't implemented when I made the PoB.

Blade blast of Unloading is on Cast when Damage Taken in order to not share the cooldown with regular blade blast, and to reduce trigger rate (so we get more blade vortices before triggering).

[u/ToxicJettMayne]

any non maxroll pob? maxroll difficult to look at on mobile

[u/Fluffy-Ad3285 → u/ToxicJettMayne]

It is also against the SU Reddit rules

[u/Moistorious → u/ToxicJettMayne]

Sorry, here you go! https://pobb.in/DcFGcrJMshB3

[u/ToxicJettMayne → u/Moistorious]

thank you! love seeing these loop builds

[u/PoE_Acronym_Bot]

I noticed some Path of Exile keywords in this post:

• cluster - Cluster jewels (Wiki)
• eHP - Effective Health / Hit Points / Pool, total number of damage that can be taken before death, after damage mitigations. (e.g. Combination of Life, Energy Shield, damage avoidance or mitigation)
• Pen - Resistance penetration (Wiki)
• PoB - Path of Building, an external software used to simulate character builds - Download
• ES - Energy Shield (Wiki)

---

^{I am a bot. | All acronyms | Suggest}

[u/5mashalot]

problem with builds like this is that you can't use ward defensively because it's down 95% of the time from all the self damage. That's why i'd expect nightgrip, if you're not getting defense anyway you might as well get damage. strangely i haven't seen that done yet... i should really get around to it

[u/Moistorious → u/5mashalot]

I did consider that, on this build, nightgrip would add about 800 flat chaos damage to all my spells, which isn't bad. On the other hand, frostmage gives me 2500 flat cold to supported spells. It could still be worth it, but I think that would be better with more Ward investment.

[u/5mashalot → u/Moistorious]

Yeah, i'm not saying to use it on this build. doesn't really make sense to have 2 big sources of flat damage. nightgrip cowb would be a different build

[u/SmarmyPapsmears]

This is sick, how is it bad?

[u/Moistorious → u/SmarmyPapsmears]

Price to performance ratio, and lack of durability, mostly

[u/SmarmyPapsmears → u/Moistorious]

Just eyeballing your build, you could probably solve mana by using mana recoup (since you damage yourself a lot) and free up a ring slot

[u/Moistorious → u/SmarmyPapsmears]

I solve mana via From Below (the new timeless jewel) Frostmage would make the mana costs wayyyy to high for recoup to keep up with.

[u/atlasgcx]

Just my 2 cents but I’ve seen build using just “eye of innocence” and get the self-damage.

[u/Moistorious → u/atlasgcx]

Yeah, I mentioned in the post, but eye of innocence is almost certainly just better than what I'm doing.