[3.17] Beerleague's Shockwave Slayer - Optimized with Options

It’s a build as old as the ascendency class itself. It uses Cyclone to deal physical damage in an area. Recently we have added Impale and Shockwave to the build to help the dps. Shockwave limits us to using Staves or Maces and we will be using Staves for this build.

Pros:

+ Easy build to play mostly 1 button
+ Upgrades are straightforward
+ Can do nearly every map mod
+ No special unique needed
+ Good league starter
+ SSF Friendly -ish
+ Nearly all content viable with 100C investment
+ Easy to craft most of your own gear

Cons:

-Dependent on weapon PDPS
-Crafting staves is a giant pain
-Very difficult to get extremely tanky
-Getting boss-deletion type of DPS is expensive

Impale – We always want to be at 100% chance to impale. There are a few ways to get there. The easiest at league start is to use the gem in your 6 link. Alternatively, you can use both impale wheels on the tree and banner to hit 100%. Finally, you can sub a Watcher’s Eye w/ % chance to impale for the 4 point wheel.

Accuracy – We always want to be at 100% chance to hit. You will need the accuracy nodes on the tree AND 700 accuracy on gear/gems to do that. You can also sub in Precision, but will need to link it to Arrogance to fit it in.

Mana Reservation Pay careful attention to the nodes and masteries on the tree. You need all of them to be able to use the auras in the build guide. You will in fact need one additional node (the 8% node near bannerman) or an enlighten 2 to meet the requirements.

Dex and Int – 111 Dex and 117 Int are required for the build to operate fluidly.

Immunity to Ailments – Personally I think this is one of the stronger defensive mechanics in the game for this build, but if you would prefer to play with a freeze immunity flask or boots and run with Determination instead of Purity, that is an option as well.

Cyclone Mana Cost -there are multiple ways of negating the cost of Cyclone, you will need to use one of them.
Cheapest: Mana leech on a jewel or ring, not ideal, but it works. Will need to drop blood and sand or banner drop your auras to have enough mana to play with.
10c - -mana craft on your rings and ammy. Alternatively, you can use Praxis with a max roll - https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Praxis
5-6ex – chest armor with -cost of socketed skills
Big budget – Elreon ring with minus cost that is rolled well.

Main 6 link: Cyclone – Shockwave – Melee Phys (awakened) – Brutality (awakened) – Pulverize – Impale OR Critical Damage OR Rage

4 Link: Leap Slam – Faster Attacks – Lifetap – Molten Shell

4 Link: Lifetap – Vaal Warcheif – Multiple Totems – Ancestral Protector

4 Link: Enduring Cry – Lifetap – Assassin’s Mark – Mark on Hit

Auras: Blood rage – Purity of Elements – Blood and Sand – Pride – Dread Banner
IF you need precision to meet accuracy requirements, drop multiple totems and ancestral protector to use precision linked with arrogance.

https://youtu.be/OzzAB3CnbU8 - Tree

https://youtu.be/99GCljsaHEU - Gearing

https://youtu.be/yHln7gjB1Kw - Mapping

Bandits: Either Alira or kill all. Usually I go Alira to start the league for the resistance and then swap over to kill all after I fix res on gear.

Pantheon: I almost always run Soul of Lunaris. For minor, I swap it up quite a bit but Gruthkul is generally good.

Crit Damage/Rage Tree: https://pastebin.com/Ju9Vipjm

Impale Tree: https://pastebin.com/M5DaEnH7

Cluster Jewel Tree: https://pastebin.com/V5hwX9yZ

Overall the build is very easy to gear. Life / Resists / Phys damage (flat or %) in every slot. Weapon, as high PDPS as you can afford. Most slots have minor and major improvement areas that I will try and list here before getting into specifics. Basic gear in every slot can be had for a few chaos. Minor improvements are generally 10-20c per slot while major can be multiple EX or more. Examples of gear are in the next section.

Rings: Life + Res
Minor Improvement: Phys damage
Major improvement: Crit multi, vuln on hit

Ammy: Life, Stats, Crit multi
Minor: Phys Damage
Major: +phys gem level / pride aura effect

Helm: Life + accuracy
Minor: Cyclone or Blood and Sand or Blood Rage enchant / implicits
Major: crit multi and +phys damage taken

Gloves: Life + accuracy
Minor: attack speed / phys damage / implicts
Major: Melee damage

Boots: Life + Movespeed + Res
Minor: Enchant /implicits
Major: Tailwind + elusive

Belt: Life + Res
Minor: Vise with good Eye
Major: Melee damage, attack speed, flask effect

Body armor: Life + Res
Minor: Base crit or -mana cost
Major: -mana cost / base crit + additional curse

Weapon: 500 PDPS
Minor: 650 PDPS
Major: 800 PDPS

Rings:
Unique worth looking at? Praxis

Ammy:
Unique worth looking at? None

Helm:
Unique worth looking at? Abysuss (only for bossing) Starkonja’s, Crown of the Inward Eye (great choice)

Gloves:
Unique worth looking at? Atziri’s, Great Old One’s Tentacles, Asenath’s Gentle Touch

Boots:
Unique worth looking at? none

Belt:
Unique worth looking at? Ryslatha’s Coil, Headhunter, Mageblood, the Retch

Body Armor:
Unique worth looking at? none

Weapon:
Unique worth looking at? None, but Hegemon’s Era can be an okay starter.

Flasks:
Unique worth looking at? Lion’s Roar, Bottled Faith

Jewels: Link WIP
Unique worth looking at? Watcher’s Eye, Forbidden Flame / Flesh

Less than 5ex – Life and Res on all items, make sure the life roll is max, or near max. Use very little currency on gear slots EXCEPT your weapon, dump all available funds into weapon as that is the bulk of your dps.

5-10ex – Consider crafting a body armor with crit, additional curse and -mana and get vuln on hit ring.

10-20ex – Upgrade weapon and jewels

20-30ex – Bottled Faith and swap to cluster jewels

30-50ex – craft helm and tailwind/elusive boots

Large cluster jewels can be great for the build, however they are expensive and you need to use other expensive jewels to make them an upgrade. Generally speaking, when you have 15-20ex to spare that isn’t a 15% dps upgrade to your weapon, cluster jewels will be an upgrade – otherwise they are going to be a dps loss. You can try your hand at crafting your own with harvest to save currency, buy 8 passive bases and roll attack harvest crafts.
I’ll have an upgrade guide on them here in a few days.

What is worth crafting and what isnt? From a SSF perspective everything needs to be crafted, but from a SC perspective ill talk about item slots that are better off crafting than being bought from other players. One note, I am talking about a lot of Harvest crafts here - I do not mean use the craft 'reforge X with more common' I am talking about the craft 'reforge with at least ONE x mod'

Rings and Amulet - honestly better off buying these, but if you want to craft them essence crafting for res / phys damage until you hit what you want is often the best way.

Jewels - harvest spamming for crit on regular jewels is good, as is attack mods on cluster jewels. No other great way to craft either.

Gloves - we dont have any real game breaking mods with influence and we have a lot of very usable unique gloves. I would stay away from blowing a lot of currency here. Assuming you need to craft gloves, start with a good eldrich base, or one with IAS/Life/Phys fractured. From there, essence or fossil spam for life.

Boots - Honestly, lot of luck involved in crafting GG boots due to Elusive and Tailwind being and suffix and prefix. If you do want to craft them, or try your hand at it, you can certainly take a pair of elusive boots and slam then into a tailwind pair with your fingers crossed. You can try and fix them with Aisling, but not much can really be done from there.

Weapon - Crafting a GG staff is painful. Fossils are your best bet, but even that is pretty rare to get a 800+ PDPS hit. Crafting them can be profitable, but you could easily lose 50ex before hitting as well. You will need to watch out for combinations of mods that are useful when using split beasts, as, realistically that is the only way to make profit and usable staves. Side note, would not try crafting staves unless you have 10-20ex that you want to gamble.

Belt - Buy an elder or hunter vise, or create one. Spam harvest rolls until T1/2 Life + %life, from there you can lock prefixes and use Harvest to force speed mods. It can get quite expensive with each pull.

Chest + Helm are our 'easiest' GG crafts. Both take around 6-8ex for a basic start.

For the chest, start with a 6 linked i85+ hunter or Warlord Astral Plate. If Hunter, roll the attack's have additional crit mod (make sure it is T1). for Warlord, you are looking for -mana to socketed skills. It is cheaper to start with the Hunter armor from my experience. Buy the other armor, does not need to be 6 linked or even the right base. Take the non 6 linked base, slam it into the 6 linked base with an Awakener Orb. If you have an open Prefix, craft Suffixes can not be changed. Also note, suffixes need to be full for this to work - since spell crit is also a faster mod and is a suffix. Then go find / buy a harvest craft for a caster mod. it will ALWAYS roll additional curse. If you have an open prefix, craft life and you are done!

For the helm, its a similar process with two bases. Elder for crit multi and Warlord base for Increased phys damage taken. Have one of them with your desired enchant. Slam them together, again both mods we want are suffixes. You can suffix lock and harvest reroll for Life.

Leveling with Cyclone is very straightforward. You get access to the skill gem in act 3. Prior to that you will want to use ground slam or cleave to get through the first few acts. Either will work without any main issues.

After you get Cyclone – your tree will look something like this: https://pastebin.com/eVPmeAdV

Your best 4 link is Cyclone > Melee Phys > Infused Channeling (will need to trade for this) > Pulverize (lvl 31).

As you get a 5 and 6 link you can add in Impale and Brutality.

We will not be using shockwave here since getting good war staves early on is painful and there are no good unique during the leveling process. We will instead use axes since there are good uniques that are always super cheap to use.

Use this list - https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_unique_two_hand_axes and upgrade as you go up in levels.

Outside of the unique axes and the general leveling uniques, both Praxis and Thief's Torment are very useful for solving early mana issues. Either would be a great pickup.

You can use Pride and blood and sand to up your damage as well. Mark on hit w/ Assassin’s mark is also a good boost early on.

As you progress through the acts your tree will look like this: https://pastebin.com/6RZp4LdB

A 4 link will be fine to clear the entire 10 acts without issue. As you get towards act 10 and into early maps, you can start to look for a 400+ PDPS staff to get you going into early maps and transition into the other tree.