[0.4] Pounce Tactician, or "Dog check everyone in Wraeclast" (they're all dogs)

Regular Arbiter with a white talisman (level 33 Pounce) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC5Jmpd1eis
Uber Arbiter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TXc4xef33U
Headhunter gameplay in juiced Atziri temple (or "oh god why am I warping everywhere?") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q_gMdidzLc
Crit variant vs regular Arbiter (level 39 Pounce) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QksG6CUd74k
Crit Variant T16 citadel (Count Geonor) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQJX1McKzR4
T16 Jamanra citadel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgaqiludMKs

Optimized version with Iron Reflexes and 80% exposure with Refraction III.
https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Lexxure-4610/character/LexxTheFinalDogCheck

Crit variant, old version, but still viable
https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Lexxure-4610/character/LexxComesBackFromtheZoo

You are a dog.

You get many dog allies, and you get to check out all the other dogs in Wraeclast (they're all dogs).

Dog artillery (there's no proof that they're not dogs, since we don't see them, so they are dogs until proven otherwise).

With three banners, the build provides nearly 100% all resistances, +6% max resistances, more armour and attack damage, increased attack speed and movement speed, as well as applying 80% exposure at base. After increases and reductions, this gets over 50% exposure on unique bosses, with the potential to go higher.

Additionally, double echoing warcries allows you to easily max out critical weakness stacks on bosses.

Additionally, we get the full 60% increased damage taken bonus from Pounce by using Wolfpack to get 18 total dogs. Wow, that's a lot of dogs!

The most stupidly easy gear building I've ever played, easily transition from campaign to end game. Fourth ascendancy isn't really required. +Minions and +Melee dual tagging allows you to get to level 40 Pounce wolves on a budget, with no crazy uniques. ES gear early, then transition to hybrid Armour/ES with the new Sacrificial Regalia base for +1 to all corrupted gems.

Reasonable tankiness at end game, final variant manages to hit the cap of Refraction 3 with over 40000 armour as a bear, while having near constant uptime of Charge Regulation to get over 6000 Energy Shield.

All dogs are created equal, but some dogs are created more equal than others. Wolfpack dogs will never be as strong as Pounce dogs, and so they must be sacrificed for the greater good. Deathmarch support and Infernal Legion provides steady healing to the pack that helps keep them alive much longer.

Dogs can be quite frail even with 20000+ hp in the highest content, under the effects of all banners. Deathmarch helps immensely with this.

There are no nodes for Banner Use Time or anything similar.

Berserk and rage provides all the damage for the build and you must constantly drop banners to full heal yourself to stop the degen damage.

Poor sustain with ES (possible to weapon swap to Wyvern to alleviate it, but not a full solution). While the 6000 ES pool provides a great buffer, there's no way to restore it without getting out of combat.

Final version requires two Unset Rings, or at minimum one ring for all three banners and other abilities.

Very button intensive if using all banners. Strongly recommend rebinding keys to make it easier to play.

(Bug) Banners require you to be on the weaponset that uses them, in order to actually use them, which can make the playstyle a bit clunky without practice.

(Bug) Pounce must be set to be used on both weapon sets, or it kills all your dogs. This forces you to carry a second set of talismans/sceptres

(Bug) Supporting Fire must be set to weaponset 1 due to a weird bug

Not the strongest area clearing capability in the highest end content (Supporting Fire alleviates this, clearing trash while Pounce wolves kill everything else).

Vulnerable to stun and degen effects.

(Bug) the Steppe map is cursed and sometimes spawns enemies near the entrance. Due to how Echoing Cry functions, you must move around before you can warcry and start your damage.

"Need more time." "Need more mana." The build requires you to hit mana flask rather frequently if you are chaining Pounce too much.

You cannot pet the dogs.

Take Unleash Hell first, then A Solid Plan, then Whoever Pays Best in that order. Unleash Hell is an amazing screenwide nuke for early leveling, useful throughout endgame just for clearing trash, while helping your dogs focus on tougher targets.

A Solid Plan offsets the negative from Lord of the Wilds, letting us get more persistent buffs. Whoever Pays Best provides a unique feature, giving impressive Glory generation passively for our banners. While it's nothing to write home about against bosses, Unleash Hell and Supporting Fire helps clear out trash monsters, which helps our dogs focus on tougher targets. Watch How I Do It does not provide enough damage to justify taking--in my tests, the damage bonus of a high phys +5 melee talisman felt equal to a +7 melee talisman. So I opted for Polish That Gear, getting a deflection bonus on Armour (I don't feel this does much, so feel free to experiment). In a perfect world with a high phys talisman that's +7 to melee skills, Suppressing Fire could be useful for creating our own freezes with its 40% more immobilization bonus and using Lunar Assault, but this build doesn't focus on that (But GGG if you're listening, you could make this apply to our minions, think about it).

Warlord's Berserker, Commanding Rage, Lord of the Wilds keystone passive, and Expendable Army provides all the damage you need for the build on the tree. We use Berserk and Craving the Slaughter to get up to 100 Rage briefly, while repeatedly putting down banners and fully healing our life with every banner we place, using Invigorating Grandeur. Considering how the best minion nodes are 5% attack speed, and we get over 150% damage and attack speed to the minions with Berserk and Commanding Rage, it's easy to see how much damage this build has! Lunar Blessing provides a massive damage boost with the base 80% exposure from our Defiance Banner and Refraction III, and we deal with the rage consumption of Lunar Blessing by using Ferocious Roar with Echoing Cry, maxing our rage once more with one use.


Pounce and Cross Slash can be combo'ed together to create wolves against tanky rares or bosses if our wolves do die. Pounce is like the swiss army knife of skills, it does everything. It's a melee slam, marking debuffing travel skill that creates dogs when the mark is consumed. Cross Slash consumes the mark to create dogs, but it also works if the target dies.

Ferocious Roar and Arctic Howl are both linked with Echoing Cry, requiring you to move some distance before it will allow you to use the abilities. On its own, Ferocious Roar can boost you from 0 rage to maximum with quality and the Roaring Cries notable, forcing its minimum power to 10.

To offset the strong life degen from Berserk, we use our banners as a means of constantly recovering life, while having our energy shield work as our buffer against damage. Charms are prioritized for bleed and poison removal because of this. We run Vitality on a Purity sceptre to prevent it from using Spirit, and prioritize our life flask to healing minions and reduced charges used to make it easy to spam to top off our life, as well as the life of our minions.

Against bosses, Ferocious Roar to max rage > Lunar Blessing > move around and Ferocious Roar a second time > drop all three banners > Pounce the boss > Ferocious Roar and Arctic Howl. Often times, the boss dies before you can finish this rotation, and you can prepare everything up until Pounce before the fight starts or between phases.

Defensively, this build reaches 6000 ES with upwards of 40000 armour when all banners are down in bear form, with Reinforced Barrier to defend with 120% armour while not on low ES. We do switch to wolf form and occasionally consume rage, which will make our armour drop briefly. The defenses only become a problem when dealing with bleeds or degen effects, or sustained fights where it becomes harder to recharge ES. While you won't survive triple empowered T16 Doryani lasers or Arbiter's 1 shot mechanics, you will survive most everything else--you'll have to avoid further damage afterwards while ES recharges though.

TL;DR get +7 melee talisman, +4 sceptre, +2 minion helm, +2 melee gloves, +3 melee or minion amulet, and a Sacrificial Regalia with 400 or more ES. You must have AT LEAST one Unset Ring, and at ultra late game you will need two (this is purely for Charge Regulation, not required to function). With a corrupted 21 Pounce gem, this will get you to level 40 Pounce. Every other spot on your gear is resists, a few attributes, life and mana. In the ultra late game you will likely need Spirit on your chest or amulet, but this is solely for charge regulation and not required. We use Iron Reflexes, so high armour gloves is paramount, and you will want armour on your belt, evasion on rings. High ES helm and boots. Try for sceptres with high Spirit, but there are ways around this with weapon sockets and Lord of Horrors.

For all gear, life is useful for early mapping, focus on getting resists and ES. You will need at least two or three pieces of gear with attributes on it by the final version of the build. A fat mana roll on one or two pieces of gear is immensely helpful to deal with Pounce's high mana cost.

Maji Talisman (rage implicit), +7 melee, +STR or +INT. Desecrate with Amanamu on such a talisman that has no available suffixes and an open prefix, or use the item that forces it to be a prefix. If it is an Amanamu desecration, you are guaranteed to get "Minions gain % damage if you've hit recently". For runes, Greater Rune of Leadership on the damage setup, and on your banner setup you can supplement one or two Soul Core of Azcapa for +15 spirit each. If available on the market, you can repeatedly buy and corrupt +7 melee talismans

Sceptre, +4 minions, preferably choose a base with a Purity. (bug) It's possible to slot in extra supports into the Purity without using Spirit. Vitality 2 is the easiest choice here, Clarity 2, Herbalism, and Upwelling 2. Upwelling is a very large damage increase, it's almost worth having a Purity sceptre without "Allies have increased damage", over a similar sceptre with the modifier. Minion Life is immensely useful as well. (Late game) you need to essence slam Aura magnitude onto the suffix, which gives you a one in three chance of bricking the sceptre. If you're using Minion Life on your damage setup sceptre, it's wise to have it on both sceptres.

Helmet, high ES, +2 minions suffix, resists

Gloves, prioritize +2 melee suffix. If early game, focus on resists life and ES. Late game, focus on high armour and +2 melee to use with Iron Reflexes

Boots, at least 20% movement speed, resists, high ES

Rings, early game, life, mana if possible and resists. Late game, focus on resists, but get T1 or T2 evasion on rings as your prefix. For the final iteration of this build, they must both be Unset rings.

Amulet, +3 minion OR melee (preference to minion for the life of Wolfpack wolves). Increased ES% T1 roll, increased Armour%. You may need to essence slam an amulet for Increased Global Defences. It should be possible to hit 40000 Armour without Increased Armour %. For a godlike amulet, desecration suffix for either Aura magnitude or Exposure Effect. For the anoint, choose Gigantic Following for the more life and damage of your dogs (this is a 10 point save).

Belt, T1 or T2 Armour, resists. Flask Recovery is a neat bonus.

Life flask, choose a life flask that applies to minions, with reduced charges used. While not perfect, every little bit helps for the dogs and their survival.

Mana flask, reduced charges, increased amount recovered.

Jewels, prioritize Rubies with glory generation for banners. Armour, minion life, at least one minion resist jewel, and minion phys damage reduction are all useful. The glory generation is considered low value for trades, so it may be worth trying to corrupt these for different bonuses, if you have several of them.

Charms, try for Guard on all of them, prioritize Freeze, bleed and poison charms.

(late game) Controlled Metamorphosis, medium-small ring, (huge point save for Vengeful Fury, Prism Guard, Projectile Bulwark)

(late game) From Nothing, Primal Hunger saves a few highway nodes for Crave the Slaughter and the glory nodes. We can also grab Fleshcrafting for more tankiness.

(late game alternative, not required) From Nothing, Blackflame Covenant. This gives us Overexposure, Vile Mending for much needed life regen for our dogs, and Entropic Incarnation for extra damage as chaos for the dogs.

(Default druid forms, recommended) Maul on your banner setup is idea, so if you weapon swap you'll be a bear for the armour bonus, allowing you to more easily reach Refraction's cap on Defiance Banner (40000 armour). For your damage setup, it's your choice of Shred for its high attack speed for armour shred, or Rend as a defensive option--manually switching to wyvern form gives you a faster start of your ES recharge.

Pounce (both weapon sets): Heavy Swing, Bleed IV, Feeding Frenzy, Elemental Armament II, Heft
I am still uncertain about Heft for this build, I actually am not sure the best final link to use here. I have tried Freeze but I find it doesn't reliably freeze pinnacle bosses. Holy Descent is an option for its regen for you and minions. If you're running higher crit, Pinpoint Critical can be used here. You can run Impale, but this doesn't benefit your freezes. You MUST have Pounce set to both weapon sets or they will disappear, so it's important to have +7 melee and a high minion level sceptre on both, but prioritize your damage setup first for gear.

Lunar Blessing (weapon set 2, damage): Prolonged Duration II, Cooldown Recovery II, Cold Mastery, Efficiency II, Blind II
Get max rage, hit this whenever it's off cooldown, then Ferocious Roar to quickly gain all rage back. This grants your dogs a strong bonus of damage gained as cold. You do not need to stay in wolf form afterwards, they will keep this bonus for its full duration. Blind is not required, it's solely for the deflection bonus, you'll only get this off of the moonbeams that fall when you attack with Shred or Pounce.

Arctic Howl (active in weapon set 2, damage setup): Raging Cry, Echoing Cry, Enraged Warcry II, Prolonged Duration II, Bhatair's Vengeance
Normally, dogs don't really apply freeze to enemies. However, with the 80% exposure we get from our Defiance Banner, we suddenly have the ability to sometimes prime non uniques for freeze while mapping. We focus less on timing this and just let it happen throughout the course of mapping--make sure Lunar Blessing and Defiance Banner are up and have Arctic Howl echoing, and occasionally this will proc, then the added cold damage (up to 100% damage gained as cold) while cause a feedback loop that lets your dogs freeze more monsters.

Ferocious Roar (active in weapon set 2, damage setup): Raging Cry, Echoing Cry, Enraged Warcry II, Efficiency II, Exposing Cry
With quality, this lets a single use of Ferocious Roar maximize our Rage. Echoing Cry requires you to move around before you can use it again. Enraged Warcry bypasses the cooldown of the skill, but it doesn't bypass the movement requirement--you can dodge or pounce to get around faster and then use the skill again. Exposing Cry is not necessary, but it helps in situations where you can't place a new Defiance Banner, or if you've moved past a banner.

Maul (weapon set 1, banners): no links
This is only to ensure we're in bear form when switching to our banner setup.

Shred (weapon set 2, damage): Uruk's Smelting, Commiserate, Bleed III, Culling Strike II, Rapid Attacks III
Since Ferocious Roar empowers our attacks and we're constantly using it, we can take advantage of Uruk's Smelting to easily break armour of unique bosses. Everything else is supplemental and unimportant, but Commiserate is a neat addition that lets us remove bleed by applying it to enemies. You can opt to use Rend here instead if you want to manually disengage from combat to start your energy shield recharge quicker.

Cross Slash: Rapid Attacks III, Magnified Area II, Armour Demolisher II, Second Wind III
Pounce on enemies and use Cross Slash to create dogs. You can use Cross Slash as a dodge skill also. Just prioritize attack speed.

Berserk (Spirit, both setups):
It's entirely possible to run this solely on our damage setup, to save Spirit cost. I prefer to run it on both.

Wolf Pack (Spirit, active only in weapon set 2, damage setup): Bleed III, Deathmarch, Infernal Legion II, Minion Instability, Amanamu's Tithe
Wraeclast is a cruel place, and sometimes even crueler means are necessary to get by. Wolf Pack dogs don't function like Pounce dogs, and they don't get any of our melee skill level bonuses, so we use these dogs primarily to heal our other dogs. Bleed III provides a huge damage bonus for the Pounce dogs. Gigantic Following will create problems for your spirit reservation here, take Lord of Horrors if you need to compensate for the increased cost. Weapon swapping will fully heal all of your wolfpack dogs, but typically they will just be exploding during mapping passively, and they just help keep your other dogs alive.

All three banners will run Expanse and Magnified Area II, as well as Prolonged Duration. Try for no higher than level 14 banners due to the Dex requirement, the gem level doesn't matter so much, it's just duration.

Defiance Banner (weapon set 1, banners): Daresso's Passion, Refraction III, Expanse, Magnified Area II, Prolonged Duration
This is your priority banner. Giving all dogs 30% movement speed is a godsend and helps them reach the other dogs faster. Use this banner while at max rage. Refraction III will snapshot your Armour upon use, so try to use this banner last in your rotation to get your rage near 100 and get the maximum armour bonus from your rage before placing. Bear form's passive Armour helps here, as well as Charge Regulation in super end game. Aura magnitudes on the tree and your offhand sceptre will benefit this exposure also.

War Banner (weapon set 1, banners): Refraction II, Cooldown Recovery, Expanse, Magnified Area II, Prolonged Duration
Refraction II gives a bonus 30% armour applied to elemental damage. It's not required but very useful. Expanse adds a cooldown to your banners in exchange for a massive area bonus, Cooldown Recovery helps alleviate that.

Dread Banner (weapon set 1, banners): Cooldown Recovery, Expanse, Magnified Area II, Prolonged Duration

Charge Regulation (late game only, both weaponsets required):
Ferocious Roar when used on cooldown will cause us to use rage to bypass its cooldown. Using 15 rage as a bear gives us an endurance charge. (Bug) While this doesn't always happen while the skill is on cooldown with Enraged Warcry II, eventually it will give us an endurance charge to keep nearly 100% uptime of this buff. Having 20% more global defences makes it easier to reach higher armour values for our Refraction III.

Supporting Fire: Bidding III, Kurgal's Leash, Minion Mastery (or Hulking Minions while leveling), Lightning Attunement, Bleed III
This helps with trash clear throughout the game, making the dogs focus on more dangerous targets. We use Bleed III as an extra source of bleed in case Wolfpack dogs don't hit the target, but another damage support can be used here instead. Supporting Fire feels amazing from the moment you get it in act 2 as a screenwide delete button, while Pounce dogs finish off everything else.