[2.5] - Sweepy Joe, the Bloodlust Gladiator Build - (Budget | PoC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwTmih533jY&feature=youtu.be

When I started PoE a few years ago, I immediately fell in love with the community, concept and design of this game, especially around the freedom of how you play it. However, as much as I would have loved to sit down and play until my heart's content with that super awesome and flashy build, I found it difficult to find time in my working life to farm the amount of currency required, or recommended, to really make certain builds shine.

From then, I gave myself a challenge to focus on builds and PoC's (Proof of Concepts) that start off as budget builds that could take a player, in the same situation as me, into a fair amount of end game and still allow for improvement, with extra currency and min/maxing, to go beyond.

The criteria I try to meet:

1: The build should not cost more than 30 chaos to function
2: The build should try delve into some mechanically interesting ideas
3: The build should be considered 'online' by Act 4 Merciless.

This will also be my first guide that I am posting up, I am rather shy about the things I create and probably do not have that much exposure to writing build guides, so any constructive feedback would be welcome, or even just your general experience with the build.

Pros:

- High Damage
- Cheap
- Fast Clear Speed
- Damage persists on Aoe and Single Target
- Only requires normal and cruel ascendancy
- Levelling becomes easier after Act 4 Normal
- Scales well into merciless with bloodlust and multistrike paired with a good sword
- Levelling sword uniques are cheap for extra QoL
- Totem can hold its own damage if you need to stay at range
- Lots of Gore!
- Bare Chest

Cons:

- Low Armour until late game
- Bare Chest
- Moment of vulnerability when replacing totem
- Melee Range means stuns are very dangerous
- Normal should be completed with a different skill to sweep
- Can become expensive when trying to replace bringer of rain

The tree looks like your typical Duelist two-handed sword build. A lot of the damage nodes are easily interchangeable with the damage the build outputs, so feel free to shift some of the sword and attack speed nodes into more health or armour. However, I do not recommend switching out the nodes allocated to bleeding damage and % chance to inflict bleeding nodes. These significantly improve the malleability of this build's itemisation which attributes to its low cost, not to mention the primary source of damage scaling. I have also chosen to rather use two handed swords for the increased inherent attack speed vs maces and axes.

Note: This build can be structured in such a way to obtain Vaal Pact (life leech applied instantly). I only recommend this if you have enough armour from items and health from the tree to move the tree similar to the second tree below, this tree, however, is an example, you may want to experiment with the node optimisation yourself.

A very important keystone for this build is Resolute Techniques. This really amps up the chance of applying your bleed and makes every swing of your sweep all the more messier and painful!

Passive Skill Tree (Level 81) - no VP:
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQCAAHnBS0HdQmWFCAUTRXsGJEY2xpVG_ohVSFgJd8nICmlLPstMC4jNZI26DkOOuE9AECgQzFFqUZpR35M_03jUEdXDVivWp9eE18_YSFlTWa2aGVs2G87dO108XaseA14enrvfNmBm4IHhNmE74VSh2qI7Yoij2CQbJOZl3mZK57NpBmmV6cwqSepbqmUqfqtjbXytiy5HbuevJ-9Nr2Bvni-p8AawKbKkM9-0iHWWNi92WHZfNrB3D3h7-RR6hjrCe567w7yQfJF85v3MvoY_Ev-Cv6P

Passive Skill Tree (Level 81) - With VP:
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAQCAAHnBS0HdQmWFCAUTRXsGJEY2xpVIVUhYCcgKaUqOCpNLPsuIzWSNug5DjrhPQA_J0CgQzFFqUd-SshM_03jUEdRTFcNWK9an14TXz9fsGEhZU1mtmzYbqp07XTxdqx4DXh6eu982X1bgZuCB4TZhO-FUodqiO2KIo9gkGyTmZd5mSubtZ7NplenMKknqW6plKn6rEetjbXyuR27nryfvTa9gb54vqfAGsCmwzrKSsqQz37SIdZY2L3ZYdrB3D3h7-RR6hjrCe8O8kHyRfcy_Ev-Cv6P

Ascendancy:

Interestingly, this build will only require you to ascend twice to fully function. You will be taking the lower path of the Gladiator tree toward, and including, Blood in the Eyes. This is the bread and butter of this build's concept. It is what will give your abilities (not linked to bloodlust) a high chance of inflicting bleed and boost the damage output against those bleeding enemies. Furthermore, bleeding enemies that are killed by you will also explode for a % of their health. Bloody showers anyone?

Currently, the build only makes use of two unique items with a relatively low cost. The rest of my current items are basic element resistance, health increase, stat boost and armour rares.

Minimum Viable Sockets and Links:

This build will absolutely require two sets of links and sockets.

1 : A 5-link, minimum, setup for your cleave
2 : A 2-link, minimum, setup for your ancestral war-chief bleed buddy

Linking the skills in these sockets will be covered in the next section.

Unique Items:



Doomsower is a great and cheap weapon with a fair amount of damage for your build to thrive on. It has a fairly high amount of damage, a built in AoE increase and decent attack speed + steroid.



Come on. If you're going gladiator, you go man-mode! Aside from the novelty of this item and its correlation to gladiators, The Bringer of Rain significantly improves the damage of your socketed melee abilities emulating a 7-link item. It has the bonus of providing damage, health, a fair amount of armour and three support skill effects. Four linking this item is a great way to start your end game experience! The drawbacks? You're a gladiator, chest bared and bathed in blood, what nonsense are you talking about!?

On a serious note, the lack of chest armour, however manly, hits your defenses quite hard and limits your end game progression. This headpiece and chest piece combination should be the first on your replacement list should you wish to take this build's cost higher and further into the end game content.

Rare Items:

I won't go into too much detail about these items. I use them for stat boosts, resistances and overal defense. You will most likely need to play around with your own items - just make sure to cap those resistances, focus on health and really gun for that armour! Note, these are not even close to expensive rares and cost a maximum of 1 - 2 chaos orbs leaving a lot of room for min maxing.

You can see how I have linked some of these combinations in the previous section, but the concept is as follows:

Note: Bold gems are not provided by item bonuses in my current setup. Gems with a star are nice, but optional.

Bread and Butter:

1 : Sweep - Bloodlust - Multistrike - Increased AoE - Faster Attacks - Melee Physical
2 : Ancestral Warchief - Faster Attacks - Increased Aoe* - Melee Physical*

I recommend setup [1] goes into your "The bringer of rain" and setup [2] goes into your "Doomsower".

Utility:

These are the skills and gems I use as sundry utility.

1 : Leap Slam - Faster Attacks - Fortify
2 : Herald of Ash
3 : Hatred
4 : Cast When Damage Taken - Blood Rage - Immortal Call - Increased Duration
5 : Summon Flame Golem

Normal: Oak - Extra Health.

Cruel: Kraityn/Oak - Your personal choice between Attack speed or phys damage. I recommend Kraityn.

Merciless: Kill all or choose between Oak/Kraityn depending on whether you want to make use of Endurance/Frenzy charges.

For normal difficulty, I would recommend that you use a generic melee levelling skill gem like ground slam or sunder and move to ice crash or earthquake in act 3 paired with the ancestral warchief totem.

Make sure to try keep your weapon damage at a nice comfortable physical damage value and try to make sure your main melee skill is linked to a melee physical damage support and bloodlust as soon as available. Faster attacks should then be the fourth support before you are able to obtain multistrike as a replacement.

You should only really consider changing to a sword and a sword skill, like sweep, when you have a few sword damage nodes and can rely on the totem to cover for weak areas.

When you feel comfortable, try to get your first ascendancy to really boost the effect of your bloodlust support as your totem hits will have a much greater chance to apply bleed effects!

Once you hit cruel with a base ascendancy, you will notice your damage ramping up a lot more. If you have spare currency, have a look for a unique called Terminus Est. This is a great levelling sword for this build and will keep you nice and snug into late merciless - unless you find a better rare.

Ascend once more and begin your journey into merciless by capping resistances, increasing armour and upping your defenses so that you can survive and slaughter to level 65 and 67, respectively for your two main unique items.

I would also recommend that, at around act 4 in cruel, you set up your cast when damage taken link to avoid random insta-gibbs if you find your armour a little too low. Also do not be afraid to rush health nodes in this build, the bloodlust support will keep you well supported into late merciless.

current tooltips with the aforementioned gear and active auras. This does not have blood rage active or any frenzy charges.





To get a rough idea of the actual damage output of this build, the following formula can be used as an approximation:

Approx Damage = tooltip*(1+total % on bleeding increase) * (1 + more damage on bleeding multi number #1) * (1 + more damage on bleeding multi number #2)*...

Thus, plugging in the current numbers from the tree and skill gems:

Approx sweep = 26984.4*(1+0.3+0.3+0.25)*(1+0.58) = 78 875.4 dps
Approx totem = 13342.6*(1+0.3+0.3+0.25) = 24 683.8 dps

This also does not consider the actual damage applied from the bleed itself and the poison that applies on hit to bleeding targets.

When thinking of upgrades, to retain damage, you would most likely want to get a 6 link chest piece - perhaps Belly of the Beast to amp up defenses and keep the required support skills to keep sweep scaling well. Another risky option would then be to grab an Abyssus. I would, however, recommend extra defenses.

In terms of weaponry, Starforge would be the one to gun for, but note that this is an expensive Unique that drops from Shaper.

I would also like to mention here that you can work this build to work with a different type of weapon. Find which one suits your playstyle.

Also, I would not recommend getting Kondo's. This may apply bleed but the stats are not what you are looking for with this build as you cannot crit. It also attacks slower than Doomsower.

Labyrinth: I had personally found normal and cruel to be alright, but have not tested this on merciless as I have not really had a need to aside from the enchants.

Maps: I found that the build breezes through tier 1 - 7 maps quite easily (depending on mods) with fairly good clear speed on packs and bosses. Going above tier 7 required a bit more focus on retreating to heal up and watching my potions a bit more closely. I have tried to push this build, and in the video ended up going to about tier 10 - 11 with moderate difficulty. You are able to do enough damage to the bosses and mobs quite comfortably, but your lack of defenses start to really show with random one shots and extreme health drops.

Overall, without upgrades, this build will quickly and cheaply get you to tier 7 maps before you should start considering upgrades. However, this should be late enough in the game to already start farming and trading for currency to bolster the stats you need!

I would like to shout out to Bakuraijin for his help with a few optimizations and suggestions that made it into the build!