Level 90 Hybrid Crit Dual Strike of Ambidexterity Juggernaut^3.25

Notes

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QUICK DISCLAIMER: This is by no means the only way to play this build, it is just the way I like to build it. I also do not have perfect memory of every
 								 unique or interaction in the game, so there is almost certainly something I missed. I welcome discussion on anything that may
 								 improve the build further, provided all parties can discuss potential changes respectfully and rationally. For example I opt for
								  a pure defense belt before going for Mageblood or Headhunter, but one could easily decide that Ryslatha is more their vibe, 
								  and that's fine! What's not fine is declaring the build is inferior to alternatives with only logical fallacies to back up that claim. 

														  Expand knowledge with discussion, it's how we discover cool shit.
******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Table of Contents:
	
	Overview of Strengths and Weaknesses

	Using the PoB correctly

	Summary of Defensive Layers
		AR/ES vs Pure AR or AR/EV
		Recoup
		Petrified Blood and Always Leech
		Traumatizing ourselves for fun and profit

	Summary of Offensive Scaling
		Blitz
		Crit
		Varunastra vs Frostbreath/Death's Hand
		"Phys as X" vs pure phys and how it affects Off hands

	Leveling guide

	Gear requirements


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																					Build Strengths and Weaknesses
====================================================================================================================
Pros: 
* Extremely high recovery
* Benefits heavily from elemental flasks change to give max resists instead of less damage taken
* Recovery scales to damage intake, meaning juicing is safer than typical.
* Practically crit immune via 3 sources of -30% crit damage taken. 10 % bonus crit damage even in a map that amplifies a monster crit multi roll will 
   be indistinguishable from normal hits
* While expensive uniques are shown in the high end gearsets, the build kills voidstones without expensive equipment, the worst offenders are a
  % Chance to Fortify Frostbreath and two ivl 68+ Clusters.
* Multiple melee targets + Melee Splash = Shotgunning mobs with overlapping aoes.
* Incredibly cheap weapons thanks to using a very common unique and our offhand being craftable with just essences once the base is found
* Triple dipping on Trauma Self Damage via Divine Shield, Jugg ascendency, and Life+mana recoup.
* Slayer Overleech due to Petrified Blood and careful life reservation
* Incredibly high mitigation
* Elemental Ailment immunity via Stormshroud

/shrugs:
* Off-meta is a deal breaker for some people
* PB can be concerning without life recoup on rings
* I haven't actually used % chance to fortify and am kinda just assuming 15% 8 time a second means Fortify is going to be capped soon enough.
  Worst case scenario this requires a pivot to getting a Megalomaniac with Overlord and Quick and Deadly and moving 3 passives around
* Uses 4-6 utility buttons: two totems, movement, deploying the banner, optional choice of utility ability, and optional use of Vaal Arctic Armor

Cons (Ordered by importance):
* Petrified Blood protects us from HITS, but not DoTs. Chaos DoTs in particular slurp up our lifebar with a bendy straw.
* I need to emphasize that Chaos DoTs hard counter us
* Ramping damage and recovery means high mobility bosses cut our damage and healing significantly. 
* We cannot afford to get spell suppression due to being unable to get suppression passives or suffixes.
* 100% chance to hit is especially important. Missed hits lose the immediate damage from the miss and also the trauma for later swings.
* While it can go fast, we don't have things like Cleave of Rage or Tornado Shot's ability to slap most of the screen
* Dual Strike is a C-tier leveling skill, B-Tier after Tribal Fury and +1 Targets mastery.
* Rough early game start due to not being able to use some of the better leveling skills as easily as a Duelist could.
* The build has a tendency to encourage standing and fighting instead of dodging to play into it's high recovery, which can lead to death before
  you know what you can or cannot tank. (my oft-mentioned favorite minigame "Can I tank it?" exists for a reason)

Viability in various contexts:
SSF: Endgame scaling vs bosses is dependant on Blitz forbidden jewels but will still be strong enough for blasting maps without it.

Hardcore: The build can get cheap shotted before its recovery engine kicks in, but once in combat it is difficult to kill short of one hit kills. I would 
				likely trade away crit nodes for more defense (suppression?) myself, but I also freely admit to not having the courage to play hardcore

High mobility low uptime content (Sirus teleporting around, Legion): Not great. While not as awful as Divergent Boneshatter builds of leagues past,
																										  the build still needs to ramp up its damage -and therefore recovery- for a couple 
																										  seconds to really take off.

Extra Content to run (green is what i farmed to get my Mageblood last league):
Delirium, Heist, Expedition, Blighted Maps (Blight encounters in maps can be iffy with bad tower luck), Essence, Harvest, Delve, Einhar, Jun, 
Strongboxes, Ritual, Harbinger, Beyond, Abyss

Extra Content requiring a bit of gear first:
non-uber Bossing, Blight in maps, Alva, Rogue Exiles (Entirely because of the Chaos DoT exiles), Ultimatum (avoid ruin), Eldritch Keystones

Extra Content I would avoid:
Breach: We lack the mobility and coverage to make the most of the encounters
Legion: We lose time to ramping and also the same issues as Breach

Any types of content I didn't address I didn't experience enough of recently to have a worthwhile opinion

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																								Using the PoB Correctly
=====================================================================================================================

There are a LOT of things going on in this PoB. Lets go over it:

Gear Sets and Passive trees:
There are a total of 18 Passive trees at various stages of progression, and 14 gear sets

The first 11 skill trees are leveling through the acts and represented what I had on my recent test run. With the exception of the Brutus skill tree, each 
one has a corresponding equipment set to show what i was wearing at that time. These gear sets aren't meant to be strictly copied, but are there to
be compared  to if you're struggling in a place. For example, if you're dying a bunch in Act 3 and look at what I had at that time you may notice you're
lacking resists

The next three are trees where the user has not been able to secure Clusters or Abyss Jewels - These trees use the Early Mapping Progression set

"90 Clusters - Abyss" and "95 Clusters - Abyss" are what I consider the upper limit of the mid game setup. These pair with the "4 Voidstones" set

The last two trees are for when you have pretty much everything, and use any of the sets between 4 Voidstones, Mageblood, or Headhunter. 

Appropriate Trauma Stacks:
Every time you check a different set, double check the trauma stacks being used. I believe PoB defaults to 75% of your maximum cap if you leave
Trauma stacks at 0 or blank. I tend to prefer to see what my max dps is since I generally can face tank most things, so i compare DPS numbers max
Trauma to Max trauma, and it lets me confirm I'm still at 90% damage reduction vs my own damage.

If you find you do not have 90% physical damage reduction against yourself, the easiest fixes are to move some points into more endurance charges. 
It's not perfect, as some mobs will take your charges away, but it's a good stop-gap while you search for you next upgrade.

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						                                                               Mana Recovery and Reservation.
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Mana Recovery:
Because we dont get any mana leech on our tree directly, we need an item or two to solve mana. Phys Damage leeched as mana exists on the
following gear slots:
* Gloves
* Jewel (standard, not cluster notables)
* Rings
* Amulet
* Weapon

It doesn't overly matter where you get .2% mana leech, but note that getting it on a jewel may cost an Abyss Jewel or 2 passive points to get a jewel
socket depending on your progression. The best place to get mana leech is as a prefix on gloves, followed by rings.

As an additional source of mana, I run a 6% damage taken recouped as mana mod on a ring or amulet as an alternative to -mana cost. Since I don't
reserve mana to the point of barely paying for skills, a bit of time in combat gives me practically infinite mana for 4 seconds even after the bar fills.

This also lets me ignore the "Cannot Leech" map mod, as getting hit once or twice is enough to start the trauma engine and self-sustain my mana from
this point on so long as you keep moving from pack to pack and use a little care starting fights after 4 seconds since the previous one.

Life and Mana Reservation: 
The skills we reserve on life and mana change based on whether or not we have an Enlighten gem on hand and full investment in our reservation
passives. We use Discipline from around act 10 until the midgame where we pick up an Enlighten and have at least 1k ES without Discipline. After
we have Enlighten and slot in Hatred, mana reservation will be in a position where Assassin's Mark wont trigger while we have our Banner up, and 
there are a few ways to address this:

* Deploy the banner when we want to Mark a target to free up the reservation (the previously mentioned mana recoup will instantly fill our mana)
* Swap the Phys as X implicit from our helmet for mana reservation, which means we take more damage and makes 90% PDR harder to accomplish
* Use one the extra gem socket to Lifetap Assassin's Mark
* Put Assassin's Mark in our CWDT - Lifetap - Immortal Call link, replace Mark on Hit with one of the Utility skills.
* Downrank Assassin's Mark to lvl 1-5

Additionally, the level we bring our Precision to is dictated by our max life: We level it as far as we can without reserving exactly 50% of life or more
It will be mentioned later in the guide as well, but this is what enables us to have Slayer Overleech as a Jugg. If this is not enough accuracy to reach
100%, move damage passives into Eagle Eye to get some crit chance and a chunk of accuracy rating. If you have excess accuracy rating, take the
Low Life is 55% of max life mastery and the previous rule now applies to 45% of your maximum life

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						                                                                       Defensive layer analysis
=====================================================================================================================
This build does a few things that make it incredibly tanky by leveraging it's downsides and converting them into upsides. To begin, lets discuss the
fact I am chosing Armour / ES over the more traditional pure Armor or Armour / Evasion setups.

To skip the history of how it started, the short version is I once looked at Replica Soul Tether and Divine Shield, then said "I have wardloop at home."

From that point on I started to incorportate life as ES into my boneshatter builds, in part because recoup doesn't care what takes the damage, it just 
recovers life/mana based on your damage taken, it meant that refilling my energy shield became a way to refill my life. It also means that I have a 
bigger health pool to soak damage with compared to non ES builds. 

This also means that any additional sources of preventing damage also dramatically increases my recovery due to both the Juggernaut Ascendency
and Divine shield both caring about how much physical damage was prevented, so that lead to wanting to fit Arctic Armour in. Conveniently, AA has
a 25% reservation cost which means that Arrogance with a little bit of life reservation efficiency means I can have another 20% less physical damage
taken. I also, because leech is my favorite recovery method in gaming, knew that Petrified Blood prevented you from refilling your life and therefore 
your leech would never empty from refilling your life bar. These all lead to the final product of:

* 12% of prevented physical damage regenerated as ES per second after 4 seconds in combat
* 8.4% of prevented phyical damage regenerated as life per second after 4 seconds of combat, up to 21% if given 10 uninterrupted seconds
* Life Leech that couldn't be removed that recovers a portion of my life equivalent to having Vaal Pact without the no regen drawback
* Instant leech that gives immediate life gain on hit, for a combined 70-75% of my unreserved life per second 
* Life recoup from the damage taken on life OR ES (up to 18% per ring slot) which more than pays for the deferred life lost of Petrified Blood
* 60% life damage taken immediate, with 30% of the remainder taken over the same time period as recoup
* 20% less physical damage taken, uses lose half health from PB into a net gain of EHP vs Phys and fire damage (50% / 60% / 20% = 104%)
* The previously mentioned less phys damage taken is paid for with the life I can't recover thanks to Petrified Blood, which also prevents my leech
  from draining out as if i was a Slayer
* Damage Taken as X with 8% of armour applied to elemental and 10% applied to chaos damage to dramatically mitigate elemental hits and push 
  the efficacy of my lower than expected armour
* Immortal Call further prevents physical damage while active, and activates less than a second after coming off cooldown even at lvl 20 CWDT. 
  This further amplfies my recovery rates since IC is damage reduction instead of deferring the damage to a different health pool like Molten Shell.

The final step of this puzzle is Boneshatter/Trauma: Punching myself in the face as hard as I can as many times as I can directly turns my hamburger
face into enough self-healing to undo the pain of when I call for my dog to sit on my lap and he runs into the other room instead. 

Using the 4 Voidstones gearset with Forbidden Jewels, this is what our maximum sustainable trauma results in (lets say we're mindlessly slapping 
Shaper's Monster Closet or a Blight Ravaged Boss, for practical scenarios):

7.7 attacks per second at 53 trauma causes 9000 damage to our face per swing. 
That 9000 is converted to 6650 physical damage, 540 lightning, 540 cold, and 1260 fire.
Resists and armour lower the elemental damage to 11, 11, and 34; respectively. Otherwise known as "Statisically insignificant", or 55 in total.
That leaves the 6650 physical damage which is reduced by 90% from armour and endurance charges. Then 20% less from fortify. And 21% from AA
A net total of 6.32% of physical damage from hits gets past our mitigation, for a total of 422 to our face. 6230 damage was prevented, which means 
one hit causes  747 energy shield, and 504 life to be recovered over 4 seconds. We can fit (7.7*4=) 30 attacks in 4 seconds.

To be clear, that's 22,500 Energy shield and 15,000 life per second. And that life amount assumes 4 seconds, not the full 10.

Oh and while we're here, one mana recoup mod on a ring is over 800 mana per second. This is why I dont run -mana cost on my rings.

Now to be fair, this IS with Blitz up and running which not only increases the hits per second but also the trauma per hit. 
Without Blitz it drops to 11,500 ES and 7650 life per second.

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				                                                                Analysis of the offensive scaling and equipment choices
=====================================================================================================================
Somthing I want to address is something I see newer theorycrafters trip themselves up on is go ALL IN on one scaling method, and leave other 
options on the table even though combining different scalers would result in a higher, multiplicative, scaling. 

Blitz and Crit Scaling:
As alluded to in a few sections of this write-up, we make use of the Blitz forbidden jewel to supercharge our attack speed and therefore damage and
self healing. Blitz, however, requires that we stack crit for reliability and locks us out of Precise Technique and Resolute Technique, in addition to
Elemental Overload being impossible to make a into a net positive. So we go all in on crit and be done with it. Frostbreath has a poor baseline
crit chance, which means sources of flat crit to prop it up are essential to avoid spending too many resources on crit. As part of this I opted for the
following crit sources:

* 3 notables on the tree (for chance and multi) 
* Increased Critical Strikes support (for flat chance)
* Assassin's Mark - and therefore power charges from quality% (The flat chace, increased chance, and crit multi trifecta)
* Late game a Watcher's Eye with the Crit Chance while affected by Hatred mod

This gets us to about 66% crit chance, or about [Atk Speed] * 1.33 crits per second due to each weapon critting independently. The math of course
gets immediately fuzzy thanks to each charge giving more attacks per second in exchange for taking away our crit chance, but we cap on blitz in
about 3 seconds and then only need a single crit once every 10 seconds. 

Being capped on Blitz results in: 40% more attack speed, 40% more added damage from Trauma, and 20% less crit effectiveness for a net DPS
gain of ~60% more, assuming no Diamond Flask is active. With a 150% crit chance flask running, Blitz is a 75% more multiplier over not having it
as a proportionally smaller chunk of crit chance is lost in exchange for 40% more attack speed and 40% more damage.

This is in addition to crit being approximately a 220% more multiplier over not having crit scaling at all.

Rite of Ruin Alternative Forbidden Jewel:
Reddit user Ghepip pointed out that Rite of Ruin is another strong damage scaling ascendency (they kick start their Rage with Chain Hook + gloves).
Following up on that, I noticed that it is very comparable to Blitz at the early to midgame, and only loses out to Blitz at high investment thanks to the
Difference between stacking increases vs adding a More %. I ignored it initially since I misunderstood the life loss to be damage based on % life + ES
like Blood Rage, but since Rite of Ruin is a Life Loss effect, it doesn't interrupt our Energy Shield recovery at all. If Rite of Ruin jewels are significantly
cheaper, absolutely grab them before Blitz and resell them later

Weapon Selection and why Cluster Jewels invalidate everything:
Before we can discuss weapons, first the most efficient way to scale damage up needs to be addressed: Cluster Jewels

The single best passives we can take in this build is Ambidexterity on the main tree, and Quick and Deadly, a notable on Dual Weild clusters. Either
gives 60% generic damage to our main hand AND 30% attack speed to our off hand. There is not a single notable that can compete with getting
more instances of Quick and Deadly for either damage per hit on the main hand or attack speed in the off hand. The fact we can also roll Fuel the
Fight for another 30% damage 15% attack speed just further pushes Clusters over the edge on damage scaling.  To be absolutely clear, 
a cluster with Quick and Deadly, Heavy Hitter, and Fuel the Fight gives 45% attack speed and 102% attack damage to any weapon for 6 passives
from QnD, FtF, and the small passive. Thanks to Petrified Blood, Fuel the Fight is always active. This is ignoring the 2 jewel sockets that are now 
also immediately available. The only passives that can compete with Quick and Deadly is the once per build Panopticon

A lot of discussions I see are on what weapons you use with Dual Strike of Ambidexterity. One that I see fairly consistently paired with Trauma is
Varunastra. For those not aware, it is a one hand sword that has ~275 damage per hit, some mana on hit, and most importantly it counts as all
weapon types which is why it's able to be used with Trauma. I see a lot of arguments that because it counts as all weapons, you grab the best 
passive groups for each weapon type to leverage  that special affix. However, there are too many sources of generic Melee/Attack/Physical 
damage that using Varunastra becomes a case of 3 + 3 = 6. It is better to use a weapon like Frostbreath -with it's built in Double Damage- or the
mace Death's Hand -using Wither with the newly reworked Unholy Might on crit- to instead scale your damage with a multiplicative boost over 
just adding flat damage

Moving onto the off hand weapon selection, there's two options I see suggested: a high phys damage off hand because the off hand still does some
damage, or a Phys as X stat stick to go all in on the main hand's higher damage per hit. Phys as X in any Trauma stacking situation is objectively
better than pure phys setup. The math to back this up is as follows: 
A Siege Axe with all three T1 Phys damage rolls has 232 to 435 damage per swing, for an average swing of ~335 while a
A Siege Axe by default has 46 to 84 damage per swing for an average swing of 65, which is a difference of ~270 damage per swing. 
A 2 mod stat stick axe has, with average rolls, 30% phys as X, and we'll assume the third prefix got eaten by a dead stat.

In order for the stat stick to win, we need: 

X Trauma damage * .3 Phys as X * (1 + 1.7) phys as X affecting the main hand and off hand = 270 damage on the off hand.

X * .3 * 2.7 = 270 -> x = 270 / .3 / 2.7 -> x = 333 Flat damage from Trauma, equal to 18 or 19 stacks of Trauma.

Keep in mind this was a pDPS axe with *three* near perfect rolls. a 630 pDPS axe. It lost to an axe with two mid tier rolls after a very low trauma count.
It would take an estimated 1.8 million chaos to throw essence of Zeals at an axe with one of the two rarer mods already fractured to chase that axe 
and its worse than an axe that can be made with 3,600 chaos worth of throwing essence of zeals at a shaper axe.

We do not run a Phys as X weapon on the main hand because Maces can only roll 1 Phys as X from Shaper, and even 45% as X would be lose
to Double Damage / Unholy Might because 3 + 3 = 6 and 3 * 3 = 9. See "Impossible Mace - For Proof Only" in the equipment tab for confirmation

3 + 3 = 6, 3 * 3 = 9

Setups I haven't mathed out yet:
The reworked Unholy Might opens up new avenues of damage scaling thanks to converting all our damage to Chaos and giving wither on hit. I know
there's a unique that converts all elemental damage to chaos and treats the enemy's chaos resist as 0, but I would have to math that out and update
the guide later with my findings if I want to get this out for people before league start. I will say that if Wither can easily stack to 15 without scuffing
the build, then Deaths Hand is objectively stronger than Frostbreath if you can ramp it, but Frostbreath's double damage on chilled targets is less
ramp up time and therefore better for mapping. The opportunity cost of the "Enemy chaos res is 0" unique is also completely unknown to me, I don't
even know what else is on that thing.

Forbidden Jewels and Watcher's Eye vs Budget options:
Unfortunately, we get an excessive amount of power out of the Forbidden Jewels and Watcher's Eye in the endgame build, which is less than friendly
to SSF players. However, there is an alternative that we can use that bridges the gap: Abyss Jewels. Tecrod's Gaze grants us a large chunk of Crit
Chance per Murderous Eye jewel we run, and conveniently we want to run two or three early on to enable the Elemental Avoidance of Stormshroud
as Abyss Jewels can roll 30-50% Chance to Avoid Shock. This lets us pick up jewels with attack speed on crit, global crit, or accuracy rating  as the
 other suffix as well as some life and/or ES on the prefixes. Flat damage rolls are negligible thanks to trauma, however.

=====================================================================================================================
				                                                                             Leveling Guide Portion of the Guide
=====================================================================================================================

Evergreen tips:
* We need a large quantity of Transmutes and/or Alchemies for resistance fixing starting in Act 5 or 6. Small rares you will never use 
(1x1, 1x3, 2x2, even 2x3 sized items) are worth grabbing to vendor unidentified for transmutes. Uniques that are useless to us we vendor for alchs.

* Until Act 9, ES wont be a consideration on gear, making pure Armour the best option followed by Armour / Evasion. 
  After Act 9 Armour / Energy Shield  becomes best and by yellow maps should become mandatory. 
  Your priority on gear defence until Act 10 should be:
  Armour > Armour / EV > Armour / ES > Evasion > Evasion / ES. After Divine Shield is taken, AR/ES is king.

* Slow is smooth and smooth is fast: Rushing too hard and neglecting stats or resistances or overly aggressive and greedy mechanical play that kills 
  you will slow you down tremendously. In PoE I like to play a mini-game called "Can I tank it?". In the campaign the answer is always NO. 

* Unless it is required for a quest, skip unique monsters. The time to kill to loot ratio is not favorable.

* The following extra content should be done for either resources or exp: Red Einhar Beasts (unless its a tanky mob base like Giant Bear), Essence,
  and Strongboxes. Add Delirium if you're feeling powerful, but ignore dual wield passive clusters until ilvl 68

* If your luck is especially with finding weapons, vendor a Blacksmith's Whetstone, a rare Rustic Sash (use an essenceon it if needed), and a weapon
  for a new weapon with 50-64% Increased physical damage. At that point just craft attack speed and it's good to go. You can get a higher mod with
  unique belts, but Faminebind is the only one I would vendor instead of using myself.
	
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Detailed leveling through the acts:
======================================================================================================================

Color of act headers is how difficult they were during a test run after patch notes dropped for 3.24. Red is Difficult, Green is easy, Yellow is
average. mixed colors (such as "Act 3:") indicate an act starts off one difficulty then changes after the mid-act boss(es). Logging out shaves several
minutes over the course of the acts. 

Routing color key: Quest Objective or Rewards, Waypoint or Town Portal, Distraction to avoid, Labrynth detour, Vendor / pick up rewards


Act 1:

Hardest Section: Submerged Cave. Do NOT fight the water elementals as they can chill and freeze you easily, but have terrible aim vs moving targets. 
Just run past to the Ledge where you'll catch up on exp. Cold damage and an aggressive opening set of passives makes the early game difficult to pay
off later on with the extra damage to make the mid-later acts easier once our defenses come online.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things to keep in mind:

Make a Duelist to Mule:
We need the extra scrolls, skill gems, and quicksilver flask to smooth progression for the marauder. Vendoring two of the duelist's life flasks with one
marader life flask lets us start off with a medium life flask which will help in the Submerged Cave.

Check the vendors for these until you have them:
Check for r-r-g, g-g-r links and movement speed boots.

High Risk strat: Buy 1-2 iron rings asap
Safety Strat: Buy coral rings instead

Leveling Skills:
Dual Strike is giftedly bad at the start of the game due to its low speed, but as a Marauder we can't use pure projectile skills as well as a Duelist start 
since our early damage nodes are Melee Physical Damage instead of Attack Physical Damage. I suggest using Smite or Molten Strike to begin with as 
they scale well off supports we'll later use on Dual Strike and it minimizes gem shuffling later on to do so.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Equipment:
ID any Mace, Axe, or sword weapon until you reach Versatility. Until you swap to Dual Strike a 2h weapon is fine but you may have issues with not
enough Wisdom scrolls. a Chestplate, Scale Vest, or Light Brigandine before Brutus is fantastic for mitigation, even if it's white


Act routing: 
Make a Duelist Mule -> Hillock -> rewards + vendor -> Get Coast WP -> Medicine Chest -> Logout -> Chest rewards -> all currency/loot/flasks in stash
 -> Logout -> Delete Duelist -> Repeat on Mara -> Skip Fetid Pools -> Breaking Eggs -> Drop portal at Submerged Cave bridge -> Ledge WP -> 
Climb WP optional -> Prison WP -> Return to town -> Take portal -> Giant Crab -> logout ->  Quest rewards -> Prison -> Lab Trial -> Kill Brutus -> 
loot and logout -> quest rewards + buy gems -> Ship Graveyard -> Get WP -> portal on ship graveyard cave -> Cavern of Wrath -> WP back to town -> 
TP to Cave -> Allflame -> Kill Fairgraves -> Log -> WP to Cavern -> Kill Merveil

Skills used in Act 1:

Active: 
G Dual Strike - Duelist Hillock 
R Smite - Mara Hillock (purchase)
R Ancestral Protector - Breaking Eggs
R War Banner - Breaking Eggs (purchase)
B Frostblink - Breaking Eggs (purchase)
R Leap Slam - Brutus
R Vitality - Brutus (purchase)
G Precision - Brutus (purchase. Buy when chance to hit drops below 90% or if you have extra green sockets)
NA Any blue gem (vendored with iron ring for sapphire ring for easier Merveil fight, purchase if one didn't drop)

Supports:
R Chance to Bleed - Duelist start
R Ruthless - Mara Start
G Momentum - Duelist Medicine
R Ancestral Call - Mara Medicine
G Faster Attacks - Prison

Currency needed: 2 Transmutes, 2-3 wisdom scrolls
Total sockets: R-R-G, G-G-R, 4 unlinked R, 1 B, 1 G


Act 2:

Probably the easiest act short of lucky drops later game. 


Difficult Encounters: The Weaver if you had bad luck with equipment and adds stack up. 
Undead Vaal Commanders are tanky, recommend skipping rares. Treants can just be skipped over.

Routing:
Old Fields -> Kill Great Old One -> get Crossroads WP -> Fellshrine -> Lab Trial -> logout (skip golden hand) -> Crossroads WP -> 
Chamber of Sins -> Lab Trial -> Get Baleful Gem -> Logout -> Crossroads -> Broken Bridge -> Kill Kraityn -> logout -> Get Riverways WP -> 
Western Forest -> Kill Alira -> Kill Blackguards -> Weaver's Chambers -> Kill Spider -> logout -> Get Rage Support -> Riverways WP -> 
Wetlands -> Kill Oak -> Get WP -> Get quest rewards -> Rest of the act is a straight line -> Get recipe in Pyramid Apex before leaving

Equipment:
Continue to prioritize fast weapons for better synergy with Rage's flat damage boosts and ramping rage faster. 
Cold resist will take a backseat to Fire and Lightning in preparation for Act 3. 
Damage is mostly physical or chaos, but Vaal Oversoul has a lightning beam and cold damage.

Skill Gem changes:
Replace Molten Strike entirely after killing The Weaver, linking Dual Strike to Rage and Ancestral Call. 
Keep Ruthless for swapping into on bosses if desired.

Active Gems:
R Herald of Ash - Intruders in Black
G? Precision - If weapon RNG refuses to give decent swords for implicit accuracy.
G Blood Rage - Intruders in Black (purchase)
R Ancestral Cry - Intruders in Black (purchase - optional. I skipped it myself but others swear by it)

Support Gems:
R Rage Support - Sharp and Cruel

Currency needed: 1 or 2 alteration

Discarded gems:
Molten Strike and Momentum. 
Keep Ruthless in bags in case a 4L drops in Act 3 and / or swapping in for bosses

Act 3:

Hardest Encounters: Depends on how well you've kept up with resistances while leveling:
Low Fire Res - Gravicius (skippable), Melee Piety in Lunaris, Fire Blackguard in Dominus fight
Low Cold Res - No major threats (Use pillars to avoid Archer Piety)
Low Lightning - Dominus (dodgeable attacks), Crematorium Piety if she stacks her spells on each other, Spark Blackguard in Dominus fight.
If your resists are 40-50%+ there are no major threats.

Things to keep in mind:
* Make sure rings are either Ruby or Topazes at this point - Vendor an Iron Ring + Strength gem or Dexterity gem to get a Ruby or Topaz, 
  respectively, and throw any random essences on them to make them rare if needed. 

* Wait on completing the labyrinth for now, we'll be taking Undeniable first which at this stage of progression is only about 10% more damage

* Be on the lookout for 4L pure armour bases so we can setup a G-R-R-R link, or any useable piece of gear with that link in it. 
  It'll be used for Ruthless/Fortify/Trauma, Ancestral Call, and Rage support on Dual Strike.

Routing:
Save Clarissa -> Town/Vendor -> Slums -> Crematorium -> Lab Trial -> "Kill" Piety -> Logout -> Get quest rewards -> Slums -> Sewers -> 
Get 3x Busts (1 before WP 2 after) -> Marketplace -> Ignore unique monster -> get WP -> Catacombs -> Lab Trial -> Logout ->
Marketplace WP -> Battlefront -> Get Spool + Battlefront WP -> Docks -> Get Thaumetic Sulphite -> farm exp if behind or struggling -> 
logout -> Battlefront WP -> Solaris Temple -> Talk to Dialla (take Jade Amulet for Dual Strike reqs) -> Sewers -> Ebony Barracks -> Get WP -> 
Lunaris Temple -> Kill Piety -> logout -> Ebony Barracks WP -> Imperial Gardens -> Get WP -> Lab Trial -> Logout -> Imperial Gardens -> 
Skip Library (unless you want added safety of Fortify when you 4L) -> Tower of God -> Kill Dominus.

Gem Changes:
4L when found should be Dual Strike - Ancestral Call - Rage - Faster Attacks/Ruthless 

R Determination - Lost in Love (Dont need to use it until you get Trauma Support, just level it in spare socket or weapon swap 
                             or wait to pick it up until you're heading into the Normal Lab at lvl 38.)
R Vulnerability - Lost in Love (purchase) 


Act 4:

Difficult sections: 
Shavronne if Lightning resist is neglected. 
Every other dangerous mob is telegraphed enough to avoid the worst of it and no zone is particularly difficult. 
Be mindful of mobs using bleeds in the Colloseum and The Belly of the Beast

Equipment:
At this point it is essential to start looking for Axes and Maces exclusively in order to use Trauma support at lvl 38. 
Once we have Trauma, attack speed becomes more important and we need to slot in Determination to mitigate our self damage. 
Our investment in leech will be sufficient to cover the self damage provided we still respect mechanics.

Routing:
Kill Voll -> Logout -> Free Deshret in Mines lvl 2 -> Kill Kaom/Daresso -> Logout -> Kill Daresso/Kaom -> Logout -> 
Get Trauma support -> Normal Lab (Undeniable) -> Kill Malachai

Gems:
Only gem swap is Ruthless for Trauma. At this point the build started feeling smooth to play from all the increased attack speed and damage 
being high enough to easily clear packs.

Act 5: 

Difficult Sections:
If Lightning and Fire resists are 60%+, The zones are easy, 
with special mention to Chamber of Innocence being fantastic for exp grinding if you feel the need. 
Innocence does high fire and lightning damage, Kitava does high phys damage including damage over time degens on the ground

Things to Keep in Mind:
Difficulty in zones should be dropping off at this point, while mid bosses and act bosses get more difficult. 
At this point damage should feel great and anything short of a rare should be one or two shot thanks to overlapping melee splashes.


Equipment:
* Start to only ID axes. Soon we start to take the powerful axe exclusive notables and maces will have to be very good to be worth using over an axe 
after that point (for example I found a mace with 122% increased physical damage, and it was only slightly better than an older 70% axe).

* At this point we need to begin investing in defense, especially armour. Pure AR gear is best, followed by AR/EV. 
  We dont have anything synergizing with ES yet, so those are least valuable to us.

* Fire and lightning resists continue to be the most important here thanks to Innocence and the Templars. 

Routing:
Slave Pens -> Kill Overseer Krow -> Grab two stone ring reward most likely to balance your resistances -> Control Blocks -> Grab Miasmeter ->
Oriath Square -> Templar Courts -> Chamber of Innocence -> Kill God -> Torched Courts -> The Ruined Square -> Get WP -> The Ossuary ->
Get Sign of Purity -> get recipe -> Ruined Square -> Drop TP at Cathedral Rooftops -> Reliquary -> Get WP -> Get Torments -> Take WP home -> 
Get quest rewards -> take TP -> Kill (hangry) God 

Act 6:

For new players: 
After Act 5 you permanently lose 30% resistance to Fire, Lightning, Cold, and Chaos damage. You will absolutely need to address this or you will die.

Difficult sections: 
Entirely based on whether or not you can cap resistances. Fire > Lightning > Cold resist should be the priority. 
Fire threats are first (From start of act to Tukohama), then lightning (Shavronne and Brine King), then cold (Brine King + Water Elementals in his zone).
Ryslatha has chaos damage, be prepared to life flask and move out of bad puddles.

Things to keep in mind:
This is a big difficulty spike over the past few acts, and it is important to update your equipment or you will struggle against the higher damage

Equipment:
After arriving in Act 6, immediately go to your hideout and begin filling suffixes with crafted resistance rolls. 
If your gear is especially dated, buy replacements with compatible sockets and roll them with essences you've found.
Orbs of Binding are especially good at creating a useable 4 link

Gems:
Once we complete Lily's quest we can grab the gems we'll be using for the rest of the game, minus Enlighten. 

Grab any gem you dont have from the "Pre-Enlighten Setup" skill set. 
Crit related skills, Arrogance Auras, and Petrified Blood will either not be affordable or not scale well enough and should be leveling up but not used
until around level 75 when the mana reservation is fixed and we start investing in crit

Level gems you can't use in your weapon swap so they're leveled up when you can use them.

Stats > Sockets when forced to choose, since 4L Dual Strike, unlinked Ancestral Protector, Determination, Vitality, and Leap Slam 
are enough to get you to maps at this point. The more utility skills we can fit in the better off we'll be of course. 

If you have spare sockets, Poacher's Mark / Vulnerability - Mark on Hit / CWDT - Inspiration / Lifetap can be a strong option for free passive damage.
Maim and Culling Strike on Ancestral Protector is ~25% more damage vs bosses
 and makes use of the red socket while we don't have Vaal Ancestral Warchief

Routing:
Twilight Strand full clear for Lily -> Mud Flats -> Skip Tidal Island -> Get Karui Eye -> Ignore Nessa -> Kill (war) God, use his Pantheon -> 
Run to Prison -> Lab Trial -> Kill Shavrone/Brutus -> Get recipe -> Follow road to Western Forest -> Drop TP -> Western Forest -> 
Take Recipe from Alira's camp (optional) -> Run to Riverways WP -> Return to town, take TP -> Kill (GOAT) God -> logout -> Get skill point rewards -> 
Riverways -> Wetlands -> Kill (brain slug) God and use her Pantheon -> Logout -> get skill book -> Riverways -> Southern Forest ->
 Cavern of Anger -> Grab Flag -> Run to the Beacon -> Add Fuel, torch flag -> Brine King's Reef -> Kill (crabby) God

Act 7:

Difficult Sections:
Giant Bears are tanky, recommend skipping rares.  
Maligaro's Map has dangerous bleeds, roll bleed immune if worried or just watch/listen for the bleed debuff on you and be prepared to stop moving.
Maligaro and Arakaali do Chaos Damage, but their worst attacks are telegraphed.
Ralakesh is pure phys damage, which we hard counter at this point which makes the fight super easy

Things to Keep in Mind:
This might just be a me thing but I *suck* at reading the Vaal City layout if I haven't leveled a character in a while, 
so there's a forking choice in the route in case others are like me and dont want to risk their portal fizzling from getting lost.

Equipment:
Just look for those incremental upgrades, fast weapons are still king

Routing:
Skip Weylam's Locket -> Run to Crossroads WP-> Run to Fellshrine WP -> Lab Trial -> Go Downstairs -> Grab Maligaro's Map -> Logout -> 
Crossroads WP -> Chamber of Sins -> Maligaro's Map -> Kill Maligaro -> Get quest reward from Silk -> Chamber of Sins lvl 2 -> Lab Trial -> The Den ->
Ashen Fields -> Kill (stabby) God, use his pantheon if you hate lab traps -> Cruel Lab (Untiring) -> WP to Northern Forest
Hug the left while moving north -> If you find Dead Thicket, drop a TP and move to Causeway WP -> Make a choice:

If you are confident in your ability to quickly read the Vaal City layout: 
get Kishara's Star and Vaal City WP -> return to town and take TP -> Dread Thicket -> Get Flies + Kill God(dess) + equip her pantheon -> logout ->
Get all quest rewards (Skip Gruest's Necklace) -> Vaal City WP -> Temple of Decay -> Kill God('s Ex)

If you aren't confident: 
Return to town from Causeway WP and take TP -> Get Flies and Kill God(dess) + equip her pantheon -> logout -> Grab quest rewards (Skip 
Gruest's necklace) ->  Return to Causeway -> Get Kishara's Star and Vaal City WP -> Return to town -> Get Kishara's Star reward ->
 Vaal City -> Temple of Decay -> Kill God('s Ex)

Act 8:

Difficult Sections:
Doedre is primarily a phys damage attrition fight, avoid Green/Purple orbs and she died for me before her damage could ramp up.
Yuugul deals Cold DoTs with his floating orbs, which is the hardest encounter of the act if he wont charge when kited. (he's why the T in act is yellow)
Solaris and Lunaris's big threats are telegraphed enough to dodge or not lethal enough to be healed through before they launch their next attack

No notable mob types.

Things to keep in mind:
In the Grain Gate, the warehouses with dead blackguards in front of them mark the correct path forward.

When re-entering the harbor bridge, ctrl-click it for a new instance. This may not be required but I accidentally refreshed the duration of my first
instance after killing Yugul but before grabbing the moon orb and it was still up, and we want the mobs respawned for exp and flask charges.

Skip strongboxes in zones with ribbons, they dont give enough exp for how tedious it can be to kill stragglers.

Equipment:
* At this point you should be preparing for the Ambidexterity switch if SSF: 

* Any low base attack speed mace (1.2 or slower) should be ID'd to fish for a high phys damage roll, while any 
  Tomahawks/Siege Axes should be ID'd for a combo of increased attack speed and decent damage mods.
  While we have mostly axe investment at this time, all of the axe nodes have attack speed + phys damage, 
  which means those passives still benefit a mace main hand once we go Ambi.

* If you lucked out and found a brightbeak while leveling, instead search for any slow axes.

* Soon we'll be able to get *some* ES, so some int rolls wont go amiss if you can get them without sacrificing resists.

Routing:
Toxic Conduits -> Kill Doedre -> Get recipe -> Go to the Quay (The Grand Promenade has zero objectives to complete) -> Get Ankh -> 
"Revive" Tolman -> Kill Tolman -> Grain Gate -> Kill Gemlings -> Run through to Solaris Temple -> Get Solaris WP -> Get Sun Orb + Recipe-> 
Logout -> Get quest rewards -> Solaris WP -> Solaris Concourse -> Harbor Bridge -> Lunaris Concourse -> Get WP -> Bath House -> Lab Trial -> 
Skip Wings of Vastiri (if you stumble into it grab it, but don't search for it) -> High Hedge -> Kill (m o u t h) God -> logout -> Lunaris Concourse WP -> 
Lunaris Temple -> Get Moon Orb + Recipe -> Logout -> Lunaris or Solaris Concourse -> Harbor bridge -> Kill God(dess(es))


Act 9:

Difficult Sections:
General Adus in the Refinery has bursty lightning damage, avoid his beams so you aren't slowed and forced to eat slams
Shakari and Garukhan were not threatening
Shavronne does massive lightning damage if you dont avoid her lightning stream and is why the difficulty upticks to yellow at the end.
Don't stand in Maligaro's delay chaos bombs
The Rotten Core has bleed mobs and Stygians who detonate corpses, which dealt ~1700 damage to me; dont' stand in telegraphed explosions.
The Depraved Trinity use the skills of Shavronne, Maligaro, and Doedre, avoid those and it's just using phys damage slappers

Routing:
Straight line to Vastiri Desert -> Get WP, Storm Blade, and Walk up to Sand Storm blocking Shakari to trigger quest state and drop TP at Storm ->
Get Foothills WP -> Return to town, Talk to sin, get quest rewards, get bottled storm -> take TP -> Oasis ->  Skip forbidden vault  ->
Kill God('s suspiciously named daughter, why's her name so similar to your Ex's, Sin?) -> logout -> Foothills -> Boiling Lake -> kill Basilisk ->
 Logout -> Foothills ->  skip Fastis Foruna -> Mines -> Lab Trial -> Get Wp on the way to The Quarry -> The Quarry WP -> 
Do whichever you find first: Refinery or Kill God('s Marriage) -> Logout -> Do the other objective-> logout -> Straight line from the Quarry to Act 10

Act 10:

Difficult Sections
Kitava Heralds are tanky, but the act is easy. Kitava and Vilenta both deal phys and fire damage

Equipment:
Now that we have Divine Shield, we want to start replacing all our gear with AR/ES pieces in preparation for the "100% increased AR/ES on 
chest armor if all other slots have AR/ES" mastery which is a ridiculous EHP boost.

Otherwise keep doing what you're doing. We want to get resists to 105% without Endurance charges before killing Kitava, ideally. 

Routing:
Cathedral roof -> Save Bannon -> Ravaged Square -> Get Control Blocks WP -> Kill Vilenta -> logout -> get rewards -> Control Blocks WP -> 
Get Ravage Square WP -> Ossuary -> Lab Trial -> Elixir of Allure optional but should be nearby -> logout -> Ossuary WP -> Torched Cathedral ->
Get Innocence's Bonk Stick back -> Blow up Bannon -> Merc Lab (Unbreakable) -> 
Farm Merc Labs until DS of Ambidexterity is yours (mine took 8 uses of Divine Font - get Darkshrines to fish for 2x tries and smooth runs) -> 
Kill (hangry) God (for real this time)

=====================================================================================================================
                                                                                              Gearing up the build
=====================================================================================================================

After clearing the acts, we need to start incrementally improving our gear.
Not shown in the gear sets is the issue of mana leech: It can roll on Gloves, jewels, or our Off hand. 
Early on, having it on the off hand weapon is okay but once we roll our Shaper axe then we want that to be a 3rd Phys as X mod instead.

Notable budget uniques:
Prices shown are Poe.ninja's day one prices from Affliction league, and are listed in the priority I would grab them:
* (2c) A Frostbreath will be our BiS main hand barring edge cases a unique in another slot enables 
          eventually we want one corrupted with chance to Fortify on Hit, a basic one is my first purchase.
  Once you have a Frostbreath drop everything to rush the nearest Mace mastery for all damage can chill to ensure you get double damage 

* (3c) Carnage Heart is a huge attribute fixer, on top of having all res and damage while leeching 
          (which is always active after Petrified Blood is enabled). Immediately anoint Ambidexterity as soon as possible

* (3c x2) Le Heup of All is yet more attributes and all resist with a bit of damage, and we can use two.

* (3c) Belt of the Deceiver is all res, Intimidation, and some life.

* (3c) Tanu Ahi is good *only before* petrified blood is added to the build and is a powerful damage boost this early on.

Assuming average rolls, 2x Le heup, Carnage Heart, and a Frostbreath account for all of our attribute needs and almost all of our resistances
Belt of the deceiver caps out fire resist, leaving only cold, lightning, and chaos resistances remaining.
These 5 items mean 2 mid tier affixes each for Cold and lightning resist across Helm, Gloves, Boots, and Body armour, which makes it easier to
get gear pieces with high life and/or defense stats. 

Stats on early Rares:
For Helm/Gloves/Boots prioritize Accuracy Rating, Mana Leech, and Move Speed respectively followed by 70+ life, Int is good since it's more ES. 

More resists will naturally come in from taking the remaining defense notables Faith and Steel and Soul of Steel, 
plus 5% more leading up to Prismatic Skin, which will make it easier to transition from the budget uniques to rares with chaos resist, life, and Recoup

Chest priority should be as much defence as possible, ideally at least 1k Armour and 300 ES. 
Notably we do not want *any* life mods on our chest or it breaks the 15% life mastery. However, if a 6-link with as little as 400 Ar / 100 ES is cheap,
grab it. Killing things faster means less damage taken, after all.


Gear Procurement:
The following Leagues have upgrade paths directly available to us:
Delve, Harvest, Expedition, Essence, Betrayal, Abyss

Delve has Dense fossils which will be used to roll our chest piece, since we want 2-3x Armour and ES rolls. 
Packed with Energy gives strong map clearing power early in our progression, as well.

Expedition lets us Rog Craft our rares for replacements as well as generate cash from Tujen for trading.

Essence's ability to force important suffixes (and suffixes that normally can't roll, like Dex on AR/ES boots) makes gearing more flexible.

Veiled mods will becomes essential for late game scaling and will need to be unlocked.
Important crafts are: Phys as fire (helms from Korell), and Phys as fire + Phys as Lightning (Gravicius Body Armor), and Damage recouped as Mana
Minus Mana Cost ring craft is *not* required when we're hitting ourselves for 1500+ per second and we have Damage Recouped as Mana.

Delirium is mandatory in SSF due to needing 8 passive dual wield clusters, as close to ilvl 68 as possible to make the notables easy to roll so farming
low tiers is fine for getting the initial jewels to roll on. We only take one small passive so the 4th affix isn't super important
The notables MUST be Heavy Hitter, Quick and Deadly, and Fuel the Fight. 
Heavy Hitter being the third passive forces the other two to be the front passives.

I rolled my 3 notable cluster with Harvest reforge speed.

Abyss has Murderous Eye Jewels and Tecrod's Gaze which are the stepping stone before Watcher's Eye and Forbidden Jewels.



Stats and Resists needed at lvl 95:

Stat requirements we need on gear are:
76 Dexterity. more dex has poor returns, only giving small bonuses to mark on hit, Blood rage, and accuracy rating.
121 Intelligence IF we go for max discipline, otherwise 81 int. more is nice due to it scaling ES.

Resistance requirements::
61% Fire Resist (1 T1, 1 Hybrid fire)
109% Cold Resist (3 affixes)
109% Lightning Resist (3 affixes)
75-158% Chaos Resist (3 affixes minimum, up to 6 or 7 depending on tier). 
Capping Chaos resist isn't mandatory due to 10% of armour applying to chaos and high recovery combating DoTs