Level 93 Hybrid Crit Static Strike Gladiator^{3.27.ruthless}

Notes

Notes below will assume you're playing SC Trade Ruthless 

Loadouts (change via top right dropdown):

- 'No Marylene' PoB is a general early endgame build that doesn't have spectres, chase items and the like
- 'endgame' PoB has all the stuff I'll be aiming to farm for in 3.28, similar power level to what I had after 3 weeks in 3.27 ruthless trade

Pros:

- Easy crit chance cap with Ambush + Fatal Blade
- Gladiator block OP
- Attack once every 5 seconds and delete everything around you
- Static Strike got good buffs for 3.28, better aoe for beams and higher beam damage.
- Azadi Crest further improves Gladiator lucky block and also boosts effects of lucky suppression + lucky damage (t4 unique, shouldn't be too hard to get in trade)

Cons:

- 2 button playstyle (only every 5 seconds ish but still might be a turnoff)
- Need to make sure you don't override Ambush-boosted Static Strike with another Static Strike
- Weaker vs degen pools
- Hard to scale crit multi without wasting points for unnecessary crit chance before you get Marylene's
- Can get double/triple tapped through block if you're super unlucky
- They nerfed Runegraft of Refraction so we lost +1 chain, you will want to swap supports when doing pinnacles and the like.
- Has a couple of buggy interactions: Ambush doesn't visibly go on CD (aligns with static energy duration so not a huge issue) and Static Strike's Static Energy buff doesn't get lengthened by runegraft of the warp when it should.

Why not new trans gem

- Looks very strong, should have a higher ceiling but regular Static Strike gets off the ground much better in Ruthless due to snapshotting exerts. Could potentially transition pretty smoothly to trans version later on, but would have to drop Ambush tech and either scale crit properly or go Precise Technique

How it works:

- Static Strike snapshots any exerts applied to the attack and applies them to all the beams you get from the buff it grants.
- While levelling, this means Intimidating Cry will make all the beams deal double damage
- We can then get Ambush from Siosa in Act 3 and quickly cap crit as Ambush gives massive flat crit chance which also applies to all the beams
- Putting quality on Ambush lets you reduce the amount of crit stuff you need to take on tree to cap - levelling precision also helps here.
- We cap crit without any conditional effects to guarantee ambush + static strike will crit. no power charges, no brittle ground, etc.
- Ambush prevents any other exerts so we can't do Intimidating Cry with it - this makes Paradoxica our best endgame weapon when adding a lot of flat lightning damage.
- you can do whatever you want in the 5s between ambush + static strike uses, casting curse, using smite for buff etc. does not lose dps.

Leveling:

- Mule Intimidating Cry (Brutus reward) and Static Strike (Merveil Cave) from a Marauder.
- Level with Splitting Steel + Double Strike on your Duelist until you can use Static Strike and have +1 strike mastery from Gladiator's Perseverance
- Get Blood Rage from Intruders in Black
- Take Ambush as first Siosa Gem, Conductivity as second and Consecrated Path as third


Tree:

- 'Act 1 static strike online' tree does what it says on the tin
- If you have flat fire damage anywhere, take Burning Brutality + 100% inc damage mastery, pathing through the aps nodes.
- Keep accuracy above life for Precise Technique. Weathered Hunter is OP for accuracy + res
- Stick with weapon-agnostic passives until you start doing Ambush shenaigans
- With 0 quality Ambush and lv 7 Precision you will need Fatal Blade, Heartseeker, Aspect of the Lynx and One with Nature to cap crit. With Ambush's crit mult bonus, these nodes all give very good effective dps increases as you take them.
- However, for QoL you may want to stick with Intimidating Cry for a bit, take some non-crit dps nodes, pool some gold (i.e. don't gamble it away) and respec so that you can swap to Ambush with all of these active
- Use PoB to actively check how increases to Ambush quality and precision level allow you to remove some of these passives granting crit chance
- Getting to Versatile Combatant attack/spell block cap ASAP once Ambush 100% crit is online will solve defenses as long as you get your ele res up and take a bit of life.

Ascendancy:

- If damage feels good with ambush + static strike combo at crit cap you can go block nodes first. War of Attrition can be taken earlier if you're getting unlucky with weapon drops/gambling and want more damage
- After Uber lab just take bleed pops for now, will do something to further help clear even with just the bit of bleed chance you get from small node (could take a bit more for a point on tree if you want)
- Bleed pops gets changed to bloodline later

Gem progression post-Acts:

- Either mule Smite (templar kill hillock) and vaal it (and repeat if you fail to get Vaal version) or just buy a Vaal version at some point to save yourself some vaals.
- I always end up buying Molten Shell + Automation similarly, it's not as valuable earlier on when you have less armour
- Volatility is only good if you're stacking flat lightning damage, other supports will outperform if you are not.
- Can get Fortify via mastery on tree, would recommend trying to get support for it
- Chain support is OP for clear, try to get ASAP. Swap it with something like Close Combat for bosses when more damage is needed.
- Added Lightning Damage is good if your weapon doesn't have much added lightning damage of its own.
- Cyclone + Rage Support + Cull (before Marylene's) + Infused Chanelling is nice to use while static buff is blasting to make rage, cull stuff and reduce damage taken. also feels cooler than just standing next to boss zapping it.
- Even with Ambush teleport, consecrated path is really nice for blinking into enemy packs
- You can selfcast wave of conviction for exposure, arcanist brand makes apply curse + wave easier. Can drop wave later when you get spectres running.
- Flesh and Stone is OP defensive aura, just stay in sand stance. Purity of Ele really good for helping overcap res and ele ailment immunity.
- Once you have the right corpses from ritual (turtle and fortune spirit), worth running a 4 link spectre setup with meat shield, elemental army and minion life. need to add convcation to automation for this
- If you can get your hands on Thunderfist gloves, can go for spectre+AG 5/6 link setup in chest instead
- Note that you will need something with int req to make it possible to get the 4 blue sockets needed for spectre setup.
- No idea what exceptional supports could do for this build until league starts, except cooldown recovery support which could be put on ambush for a lot of QoL

Gear Progression:

Anoint:

- Battle Trance for cheap extra damage from max rage
- Arcing Blows once you can get a silver oil (maybe hold out for Marylene's before anointing this)

Weapon:

- Hyaon's Fury is surprisingly strong for a relatively common 1 hander, rewards investing in frenzy charges, inc damage taken downside is negligible, 100 life on kill with 5 charges is very nice
- Probably best to stick with that until you can get Paradoxica
- Monastery Bell is in set 2 because I want to check if using weapon swap to trigger lucky block while boss is finishing intro monologue is worth the clunk (can cast hydrosphere and use SST on it and swap back to main weapon to have lucky block active before boss hits you... I think...)

Shield

- Get Azadi Crest ASAP
- Run whatever garbage you can find otherwise

Helmet:

- Rare with life and ele/chaos res early, flat int is nice.
- Devoto's is really nice for adding more movement speed to the build.

Body:

- Rare with ele/chaos res early, armour or armour/evasion base. Good life mod means you can unspec mastery
- If you don't get block chance from eldritch implicit here later you need to take some more on tree.

Gloves:

- Life, ele res, chaos res, rarity, etc. on a rare pair.
- Thunderfist gloves are OP when combined with Paradoxica, frees up chest for better spectre+AG setup

Boots:

- Life, ele res, chaos res, rarity, etc. on a rare pair. Ideally 30% ms.
- cd reduction for travel skills eater implicit is really nice for QoL, lowers ambush cd.
- sapped ground for more survivability or scorched ground for more damage
 
Rings:

- life, res, attributes where needed
- if you can manage your attributes without 2 rings granting them, foulborn berek's respite can give you explosions vs shocked enemies
- ritual +1 ring ascendancy could be used if the new boss drop shrine belt is at all accessible in ruthless

Amulet:

- life, res, attributes where needed, could get some crit multi here
- daresso's salute is a great common source of extra damage and speed as long as you have enough regen to offset blood rage degen
- marylene's fallacy is giga OP with Ambush, requires taking more crit on tree but can still cap comfortably.

Belt

- life and res, stygian vise not optimal now that new cord belt base with anoint available, don't know how common though and may be hard to craft a good one
- new shrine belt giga giga OP in ruthless since our utility flasks are shit, makes +1 ring bloodline giga OP, probably very rare drop though, worth chasing.

Jewels:

- use regular jewel in end/frenzy charge wheel slot to fix attributes, res, etc. or just get more damage/life if possible
- lightning damage Light of Meaning is OP on right slot
- Lots of good Watcher's Eye mods, with spectres we can be affected by wrath+determination as well as precision and purity of ele. worth farming elder for a good eye. 
   - Wrath ES leech mod is particularly useful if we're running an armour + ES chest as it helps us recover our extra ehp pool
   - possible to get block chance here, frees up chest implicit potentially

Flasks:

- Whatever you want to run, utility flasks in ruthless are mostly trash but 2x quicksilver will make mapping faster, 2x 'instant on low life' life flasks are good for emergency recovery
- Prismatic tincture with ele pen and inc effect, should have about 70% uptime

Bloodline:

- New bloodline does nothing for us. Breach ignore lightning node and cryogenesis node both bad for us.
- Trialmaster vaal skill duration/effect/aoe node nice with vaal smite, gives 10% more damage when vaal smite buff is active
- +1 ring giga OP if we can get new shrine belt. might be worth anyway if you want to fit an extra ring (i.e. foulborn bereks for explodes) in exchange for not running quicksilvers

Runegrafts:

- Warp is generally good but doesn't extent static strike buff duration even though it's coded as a buff according to poedb (boooo)
- Fortress good with some ES if you can get enough attributes to offset downside
- Don't know about new ones

Spectres:

- Perfect Guardian Turtle for determ
- Perfect Spirit of Fortune for wrath + lucky lightning damage (double lucky with azadi, I think?)
- Elemental Army gives exposure effect so you don't have to run Wave of Conviction

Endgame farming goal summary:

- Ritual for corpses, lightning damage Light of Meaning, maybe +1 ring ascendancy
- Syndicate for Paradoxica (will probs just try to buy one though)
- Elder for good Watcher's Eye
- Mirage for coins, new giga OP belt