[3.3] Lacerate/Reave/BF Champion, 6-7.2k life, 3-30mil Shaper dps | League Starter info added!

https://pastebin.com/EJieT888

- We're using Lacerate to begin with now for a variety of reasons. It's quick, longer range, synergises well Chance to bleed, which then in turn procs bleeding for Bloodlust in our separate BF 4 link. It does more damage than reave, and double strike while having longer range than both (excluding vaal reave).

- The uniques posted are just examples of what will make life much easier while leveling. Realistically, anything you can find will work this early.

- https://pastebin.com/Rz4HmHBj

- We're still using Lacerate as our clearing skill with BF as boss killer. We're now using immortal call with CWDT, blood rage and whirling blades with fortify.

- The items I've linked are an example of what to look for to balance out the character with max res, and life where possible. Again, there's no need for these exact uniques, or rares.

- At this point, we want to get a worthy foe as it's this build's single greatest source of DPS.

- https://pastebin.com/PTszEv9L

- By this point we want to aim for a belly of the beast or a Loreweave and a bloodseeker. A starkonja's is awesome too and we want a kaom's roots to avoid all stun etc before we get our 4th ascendancy. We're at 920k already on a 5 link and we have charge generation and decent movement speed ability due to dependable mana leech.

- Again, these items linked are not mandatory though are a good goal.

- 6k life and 920k dps at level 82 on a 5 link with a reasonable budget.

- https://pastebin.com/tZ7J932N - 6.5k life - 3 mil shaper dps.

This is what we should be aiming for if we want to clear end-game. All of these items listed are great though not mandatory. Things like the red dream jewel make life so much better, and a belly gives massive life bonuses.

- This is the best tree for claws and the only thing you'll change based on weapon choice, is the weapon-specific notables.

- This is how I leveled my champion and it's what I used to get to where I am today with 30 mil shaper dps and 7.2k life. This is pretty much the exact build I used to farm shaper and do end-game for people to generate currency for myself in Harbinger.

1) Damage on full life is a 50% more multiplier and with regular leech, sustaining full-life can be a challenge. The insane implicit leech from Bloodseeker combined with blood rage, and a couple of jewels with leech, is guaranteed instant full-life if we crit. This means that while Bloodseeker isn't the highest dps, it's like it has 15% more dps due the Damage on full life having such a massive multiplier.

2) Instant leech means we're much less likely to die. This is the second benefit that makes it so overwhelmingly good. You can take a hit from a guardian, then within a single crit be at full life. I have over 96% chance to crit and attack 11.25 APS which means I have full life in roughly 1/10 of a second. You can die from elemental damage 1-shots, though usually Immortal call saves us from physical 1-shots, so it makes the end-game far more approachable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLGVvC-HlXE&feature=youtu.be

- This video demonstrates preparing for shaper, by getting all things like power charges, adrenaline, vaal haste, blood rage, totem, fortify and taunt prepared.

- I didn't want to have 6 stacks of Blade Flurry ready as I wanted to show ramp up time. If I have stacks loaded and ready for his spawn, he would have died sooner.

https://pastebin.com/6dCXS14J

https://pastebin.com/8T326QJr

https://pastebin.com/WYU9YaK3

- The battle is quite difficult. I suggest using Kaom's Roots due to the excessive slow that cannot be eliminated with a freeze/chill flask. You can do it without them, however used 11 portals in my two attempts without them, and I'm down to using 2 portals per run with them.

- As there's adds throughout the whole battle, it's relatively easy to keep flasks up and charges. If we have blood rage, something getting endurance charges and a trigger gem or movement gem getting power charges, we're set!

- I always aim for the shaper first. He's extremely easy to get down, and to see when he's immune as there's a purple shield around him. There's a couple of phases where both shaper and elder are immune, though there are creeps. Once you realize you're doing no damage to either of them, gtfo of there!

- Elder's AOE charge attack takes roughly 10 seconds to charge, so I suggest testing it's charge time in order to know the last moment when you need to dodge.

- Good luck!

-

- Above is the gear from the cheaper version of the build. I threw this together in the last hour to see what it could do. We can easily beat over 3 mil dps VS shaper using bloodseeker! This version is using Kaom's Roots and we're at least 32% over all res caps!

Off-Hand Weapon:
- I strongly suggest that you get instant leech. This can come from legacy Vinktar's, Acuity, or any version of Bloodseeker. Bloodseeker is also rather easy to obtain in any league so definitely suggest that. If we take Vaal's Pact, then we cannot use Damage on Full Life which is a huge source of our damage. This will be expanded on throughout the thread.

Main-Hand:
- A stat stick is an excellent option as it's much easier to roll than an additional, excellent dps weapon.


- A stat stick in our main-hand also gives us our ability to Leap-Slam due to neither Reave, or BF being able to use a mace or a scepter.

Chest:
- Belly is the best option if you're starting out as it has the highest life outside of Kaom's and up to 45% res. I used it for a very long time. Coil is good if you can get Immunity to shock. I get my immunity to shock from a Watcher's eye combined with Purity.

- Another issue with using coil is that your overall life-pool is reduced by roughly 450. This means we're more susceptible to all damage but lightning and phys. Unable to be shocked and the phys reduction is huge though.
- Loreweave adds more dps than just about anything. It provides a more balances Ele resistance strategy and has some other minor bonuses. I think when killing something quickly means taking less hits, Loreweave seems very appealing. The numbers in PoB are shocking.

Helm:

- Starkonja's is such an amazing helm. I definitely suggest using it until much later in the game where you can either get over 5.5k life with a coil, or over 6k life with a belly. I would even suggest using it at all times outside of boss fights.

Gloves:

- Legacy Acuity are best in slot by a long shot: Life, Instant leech for both mana and life, Intelligence and crit chance.
- Tombfist provide MUCH more dps due to being incredibly amazing. They also provide more life.
- An alternative would be any gloves you can get with high-life and desirable stats like phys dmg, mana leech, life leech, resistances, etc.

Boots:
-
- I used Kaom's for a very long time due to them providing such a wide range of critically amazing benefits: Stun immune, Freeze immune, chill immune, Temp-Chains=Buff, highest life on boots. They even free-up a flask affix due to being freeze immune.
- The obvious downsides are no slots, slow, no res, can't evade. Use them if you can get the res on jewels. Move on to new boots once you get a decent pair.

Belt:
-
- Belt of the Deceiver is an excellent starting out belt as it has many good benefits.
- A stygian Vise would be the best option as it can have the highest life, dps and utility of any belt. A second option would be a leather belt with high-life.
- I only play with HH in Standard as it's just too much fun to pass up.
- The most important thing for many builds is that a belt should provide life, then whatever stats you need. If you want to use Coil and Kaom's, you will most likely want a belt with high-res.

Jewels:
-

- My only source of mana leech is a jewel. From then on, life, res and Life Leech are the most important. I use Watcher's eye to negate the downside of Lightning Coil and I use The Red Dream to extend Immortal Call while mapping. The Red Dream is an amazing jewel, but it can be replicated by using Endurance Charge on Melee Stun with Leap Slam, or by using Enduring Cry.

Flasks:

- We need a Life Flask and a Diamond flask with Bleeding and freeze affixes (unless using Kaom's roots). The other 3 are the BIS for DPS and Defense, however you can choose from what want/have a available.

Jewellery:

- If using Bloodseeker, you won't need additional sources of leech due to the implicit.
- No accuracy needed! Thanks to Champion's ascendancy, accuracy isn't a factor. Even Shaper/Elder can be taunted, so our chance to hit, and effective crit chance get an enormous boost, without ever having to worry about accuracy again!
- Our priorities are life, phys damage to attacks and then it's down to what you need - Int, resistances, Crit chance & Multi, etc.

Weapon Swap:

- This is how we get our Power Charges ready for boss fights. I have portal in there, but you want Multiple traps support in there so you drop 7 traps at a time. The weapon can be anything as we're not using it for anything other than gem slots for activating Adrenaline.

Reave 5 - 6 links

- The 6th link will be either damage on full life or ruthless. If you're having trouble keeping full life, then use ruthless. You can use main instead of damage on full life if you don't have instant leech, or have regeneration problems.
- We swap Conc effect in, replacing Inc Effect for bosses.

Blade Flurry 5 - 6 links

- The 6th link will be either damage on full life or Bloodlust. You can easily proc bleed with a totem that has Chance to bleed linked, thought we can't always have full life. I suggest starting with bloodlust.

Leap Slam 4 links

- ECOMS is if we don't have a red dream jewel. PCOC is excellent to generate power charges while mapping, though not required.

Immortal Call links

- Stone Golem is a great way to help counteract Blood rage, though as we get 2% regen after taunting an enemy, it's not required.

Auras and totem links

- Chance to bleed linked with our totem is a must. If you don't use coil, then I suggest using arctic armor for extra defense instead of HoA. Herald of ash can interfere with certain "on hit" mechanics and only provides roughly 7% more dmg, so I always go for AA over HoA.

Weapon links

- Vaal reave is for 8 stacks and completely required. Blood rage is also required while mapping as it's leech, att speed and frenzy charges are a massive damage boost.
- You can use assassin's mark while mapping if you want easy power charge generation, however as we get free charges for boss fights, we use elemental weakness as it provides a better dps boost.
- Vaal haste combined with Inc Duration is a great way to get better clear and boss killing speed, though it's not required.

Weapon swap links

- Fire trap has a low mana cost, so keep it at level one and use the trap support gems to ensure you get as many charges per throw as possible. I swap out multiple traps support for a portal gem while mapping.
- Blasphemy + Any curse will immediately trigger Adrenaline!!! Just swap back to main weapons, use a flask or wait for recovery, then use blood rage and dive in!

- YES!
- Having a separate chest for boss killing means we can have 6 gems pre-socketed, ready to be swapped together saves a huge amount of time!
- I have two Loreweave chests. I also have a Starkonja's and an Abyssus with the same links for easy swapping too!



- If you look through the forum, you can see someone suggest it for me. They deserve the credit for this idea.

- swap weapons
- throw traps until max power charges
- proc Adrenaline
- swap back and either wait for life to regen, or use a flask.
- Cast blood rage
- Cast Vaal Haste
- Throw Frost Bomb (if you want extra dps swap this in and replace vaal Reave)
- use flask all utility flasks
- Leap onto boss to proc fortify
- Blade Flurry!!!
These 10 steps take roughly 4 - 7 seconds as seen in the video. These more than triple our dps and are required to max it out. Practice doing this on easier bosses and it will become a natural reflex soon enough.

- Poe has this weird thing where your character has to be within a certain range to cast certain skills. Blade flurry isn't effected by this, but reave and Leap Slam are. If you try to use leap slam or reave out of range, your character will move closer, then attack.
FIX!
- In settings, go to input, attack in place, and make it spacebar. This means that while we're playing, holding spacebar will make leap slam and reave cast from wherever we are, rather than having to move position. It took me 2 years to figure this out and my god it makes a difference!

- Passives are almost always worth more late-game. Oak's reward is quite good, but only becuase of the life regen when we start using damage on full life. I always choose the extra passives.

- Alira's ele res and mana regen are ridiculously awesome early game. The crit multi is good, but not when our crit chance is low, so early game it's kind of negligible. The issue is that swapping bandit rewards takes 20 regret, which by the time you're ready to change shouldn't really be a stretch, but it can be if you're broke.

My Advice
- Take Alira ASAP then swap to passives once you're geared up. The mana regen and resistances will be taken advantage of throughout your gameplay, so aim to get at least 1 mana regen affix on an item, and wait till your resistances are over-capped, then swap.

- Regen can be difficult to obtain, however there's a few ways to get it.
- Boot enchants, Pantheon, Taunting enemies, special passives, stone golem are some of the ones i use.
- The pantheon Minor God, Soul of Tukohama is amazing and the only one i use.
- I'm currently trying to get the Boot Enchant "regenerate 2% of life when hit"
- Taunting an enemy gives 2% regen
- Stone golem gives 110 regen at level 21
- passives give 4.4% regen

When it comes to -60% life regen maps, we need the enchant, pantheon, taunts and passives in effect for our regen to enable the gem. You can just not use blood rage on -60% regen maps and be fine though!

- instant leech VS T16 bosses etc is outstanding. The longer a boss fight, the more difficult it can become due to flask management etc, so being able to instantly refill our health pool, means we can take down enemies faster and be safer overall. If you don't have blood seeker or any means of instant leech, just don't use abyssus and you'll be fine. You can use swords, dagger, claws, whatever you want! Champion in't just tanky, he's incredibly powerful. It's just that after years of mainly playing t14+, instant leech is something I will probably always want.

- Worthy Foe - highest DPS boost
- First to Strike last to fall - mainly a life saver - boss killer
- Unstoppable Hero - nice but easily left to last.

- The tree remains the same, however we aim for the notables on the right, specific to that selection. Daggers actually cost the most passive wise by 1 point, however swords provide by far the most dps if you can get both the west and east notables.
DPS Order
- Swords
- Daggers
- Claws

Survivability
- Claws
- Daggers/Swords

My advice
- Go Claws for instant and the highest possible leech, and to save a passive.
- If you can afford legacy Acuity, go daggers + Stat Stick
- If you can afford legacy Acuity, and have a level 98+ duelist, play around with swords for maximum possible dps.

- Once you figure out the attack in place thing, leap slam is much more convenient than whirling blades for multiple reasons:
- Increased AOE for things like charge generation
- Ignore many terrain obstacles
- Leap up levels in maps and across traps in lab.

It's slower, but after 4 years using whirling blades, swapping to leap slam has been an absolute pleasure.

- Cleave, Reave, Dual Strike, Double Strike, Frost blades, molten Strike... There's so many. Ancestral Call has made so many previously limiting skills, competitive. Pick one!

- Admittedly I know this build will look intimidating to newer/league players. I don't want to turn people away; I want to show the max DPS and cater to the players starting out. I've tried to include cheaper items and alternatives throughout to make the build possible. Please ask questions or for evidence of something if you want it. I love engaging the community and helping people do things. If I can help your build progress without actually giving you the gear, I will try!

- Reave does 1/3 the damage of Blade Flurry, so if you're unhappy with the dps of Reave, use blade flurry until you get a little better dps, or a 6th link, etc.

Can I start out in a new league using this build?
- Any build that doesn't require "build enabling uniques" can be a league starter. Instant leech isn't required, it's just desirable. Bloodseeker actually on caps out at under 260pDPS, so many other uniques are already much stronger, and probably cheaper!

Start out fresh when the league starts and have the same luck as everyone else. Start late in a new league and you should get some cheap leveling gear, and have an easier time farming currency because of that gear.

Best way to farm currency early in the league?
- Chaos recipe will always be the best way to consistently get yourself at least one chaos every few maps, 2 if you manage your inventory/gear well. In a few hours of solid farming low-tier maps, you will almost definitely have at least 20 chaos if you're efficient.

Is this META?
- Blade Flurry is arguably the strongest "melee attack" so that points towards a yes. This is either a good or a bad thing, depending who you're talking to.

What are the benefits of using a META build?
- You can kill bosses for people. This is a huge area of currency potential as certain builds require very skilled players to complete the very end-game. You can stream this for them quite readily using OBS.
- You're more likely to interact with more difficult content of the game.
- Party play is much smoother when the DPS is high, also when it clears at a pace that isn't off-screen like KB for example, people are more likely to get the exp they joined the party for.
- Clearing quickly means farming quickly. Chance and/or luck is always factors, though being able to kill things quickly should mean farming more currency and uniques.

Can this build go MF (Magic Find?)?
- I play an altered version of this when I want to MF.


This gives around 297% inc rarity from magic monsters and 168% inc quantity from normal monsters. From unique monsters it gives 149% increased rarity and 73% increased quantity.

Not huge numbers, though give it guarantees more frequent chaos recipes as well as overall loot.

What map mods should I avoid?
- Phys reflect - obviously
- Ele reflect - Obviously

Playing in a party?
- I don't think many want to play in a party where they can't keep up, or everything is killed off-screen so the loot will never be thier's. This build has quick movement skills, so it can keep up with fast runners, and it has high dps so it can clear quickly and with a very large AOE.
- The difference between this build and say a KB or TS build, is that it's melee and can't realistically kill off-screen without an AOE shrine. This means people will be able to keep up with you, and will get all the exp and loot permanent allocation is meant to give them.
- Getting an aurabot makes the game feel like having permanent Headhunter buffs!