Level 91 Crit Swordstorm Gladiator^{3.26.ruthless}

Notes

This is a build guide for ruthless sc trade, but this build will also perform well in ruthless ssf and in regular sc trade - most of the notes below are tailored for ruthless mode, if you want to play this in normal PoE just follow any generic gladiator leveling guide instead of the leveling notes here

Build overview:

- Replica Wings of Entropy got giga buffed and the dps you can get with Swordstorm while using it is insane. We use this as our only damaging retaliation skill so that we can also maintain uptime on Vengeful Cry and Berserk for big rage buffs.
- PoB doesn't currently allow RWoE to be used with Swordstorm so I've had to make a custom version with rare axes instead which mirrors the damage and stats of a well-rolled one.
- DPS listed by default is based on only using Swordstorm roughly once per second, this is an incorrect estimate as we can sometimes use it up to 4-5 times per second if we get lucky with 'chance to not go on cooldown' procs. At least 2 times per second is a better conservative estimate.
- Also whenever we use Vengeful Cry there is a 35% chance we can retrigger Swordstorm, and vica versa, this helps a massive amount with uptime when there is also a good chance to spam either skill on its own.
- Every 4 seconds or so we also want to Cyclone for a brief moment to reapply maim and sustain power charges (those last 20 seconds so less of a big deal). We can also Cyclone while clearing whenever Swordstorm isn't available.
- Berserk has high uptime while bossing as we can sustain a lot of rage via Vengeful Cry regen and rage on hit from Swordstorm
- Unless you run Marylene's you don't even need to use Rosethorn Tincture to cap offhand crit, good to use one during burst with a melee attack speed suffix mod though.
- To check what increases to attack speed can do for the build's maximum dps, activate the custom config that assumes that Swordstorm never goes on CD, otherwise they won't be taken into account as PoB assumes it never procs the chance to reset CD.
- Staying in Sand Stance most of the time while mapping is advisable, just swap to Blood Stance whenever you feel safe to do so.
- Gear is based off what I was able to accomplish in 2 months of ruthless sc trade in 3.25, with boats nerfed it may be harder to get gear like this but we still have recombinator, plus we have memory strands for endgame crafting.

Why play this build?

- Very high dps for not much investment (unless they make RWoE giga rare lol), BiS weapon is farmable from heist. Doesn't feel like a ruthless build in terms of the damage it can deal on a very reasonable budget.
- If we fail to block we can proc Vengeful Cry off a savage hit (anything that removes 15%+ of our life) which also helps us to proc Swordstorm for free, this helps remove some of the clunkiness of relying on block.
- Decent armour, fortify, debilitate (10% less dmg taken), sap (6% less damage taken), 4 endurance charges, Sand Stance, 90/89 lucky block with some room for suppression as well.
- Good recovery via Poacher's Mark life gain on hit and 15% life recovered whenever we use Vengeful Cry on top of leech.
- New Runegraft of Time helps increase dps and QoL further (probably pretty rare though), this does however depend on how it works in practice (reseting cd of retal skill via this proccing it probably doesn't keep it usable so would have to block again or hit the 35% chance via Vengeful Cry to use it again, still worth using if that's the case)
- Can get bleedpops despite not being a bleed build.
- Taunts repeatedly in a large aoe via Vengeful Cry which helps us block more while using a merc and also takes the heat off them.
- If you can find a merc that provides Pride aura you can run Purity of Elements for ele ailment immunity + big res or Determination for giga armour.

What are the downsides?

- Block being a main defense can mean that you just get very, very unlucky sometimes, we have other defensive layers to help mitigate this at least.
- Before getting Replica Wings of Entropy, you need to work with whatever you can find (ideally two good phys axes or regular Wings of Entropy)
- Block does not help us vs degen pools and the like, stay out of those.
- Full retaliation playstyle will feel clunky until you have certain pieces, knowing when to adjust into it while leveling is key. Can still be a bit hard to get used to even with all the QoL we have.
- Glad lucky block got nerfed by a bugfix (was way better than it should have been last patch, still should be great though)
- Can't use weapon mtx properly with Replica Wings of Entropy, only the mainhand part gets affected (GGG please fix :( )
- Sucks ass for Legion for obvious reasons, also not great for Blight for the same obvious reasons

General levelling notes

- For the smoothest levelling experience, start with a quick Marauder mule. Grab Crushing Fist after Breaking Some Eggs. 
- Next make a quick Duelist mule, grab Splitting Steel after Hillock and Blood and Sand after Breaking Some Eggs
- Now make your main Duelist. Grab War Banner after Breaking Some Eggs and Precision after Brutus.
- Grab Shattering Steel from Cavern of Wrath waypoint, can use this or Splitting Steel for clear, the former is good to use vs Merveil from my experience.
- 1h + shield is recommended until you get Swordstorm from Intruders in Black, after this swap to dual wield.
- Use Double Strike earlr on for single target unless one of your retaliation skills has procced, or use a Steel skill if you can only deal damage from a distance.
- Whenever you block, both Crushing fist and Swordstorm will become available, quickly use both. Keep Crushing Fist on your bar until you have the supports and investment for Vengeful Cry to take its place.
- You should be rushing Precise Technique first, with Precision you will should have the accuracy needed for it before Merveil without taking any on tree.
- If you get any piece of gear with added fire damage on it (ring, gloves, etc.) early on you can take the '100% damage with hits to ignited enemies' mastery nearby as well. Otherwise skip this.
- The axe rage on hit mastery works with non-melee axe hits, so it should work with Splitting/Shattering Steel as well.
- Take Vengeful Cry from Clarissa (not very useful yet but will be later) and Cyclone from Maramoa in a3
- Take Berserk in a4, we don't use this much yet.
- We can grab Poacher's Mark with our first Siosa gem in a3, Consecrated Path with our second in a5, and Blood Rage with the third one in a10. 
- For Automation, I would just grab it from someone on trade, you will have to mule to a3 for it probably if you are SSF. Likewise with Molten Shell.
- Life/mana gain on block mastery is cracked early on, use this until you have too much life to care about it.
- Check your accuracy as you level, make sure to not overinvest in life early on to the point that Precise Technique stops working.
- Once your life total becomes too high for Weathered Hunter + mastery, around this time take Cruel Retort and unspec Precise Technique. Take Feller of Foes soon after.
- Once you find yourself mostly using retaliation skills for dps, you can stop worrying about accuracy altogether! Focus on getting capped Versatile Combatant attack/spell block asap. Keep Weathered Hunter for the res until you're overcapped enough to drop it.
- First priority once you hit maps is to get a good Replica Wings of Entropy - heist is a good mechanic you can do without any atlas tree investment outside of blocking other mechanics. Livesearch for this if you are on trade.
- Can use regular Wings of Entropy as a stopgap until you can get the replica version, just don't use it with Brutality support.

Ascendancy order

1) Determined Survivor. 10% more aps and +20% block chance, very important for leaning into retaliation skills sooner.
2) Measured Retaliation. Retal skills will now start to pop off. If you want to stick with non-retal skills longer you could take More Than Skill here, if you do then you don't want to drop Precise Technique until a lot later. 
3) More Than Skill. Easy to enter maps with 87%+ effective block chance.
4) Gratuitous Violence. We get 35% chance to bleed per hit so this will give us lots of pops without actually being a bleed build. 

or

4) War of Attrition. Worth taking if you want to push pinnacle bosses sooner and you don't feel like you will have enough dps without it somehow. I don't think this should be needed really.

You can delay Uber Lab until you have found RWoE if you're concerned about damage. Make sure you have enough HP and defenses to tank a hit from Izaro if your block fails you.

Gem progression:

/Main skills/

- Swordstorm will be clunky to use at first when you have low block chance, no spell block, no Measured Retaliation and no Expert Retailiation support; until you are Versatile Combatant capped you will want to keep using another skill for clear like Splitting Steel. Once all the pieces come together it will really start to pop off.
- Vengeful Cry is likewise not useful much until we have supports for it, 35% chance to trigger a different retal skill from tree, a lot of investment in warcry cdr and Measured Retaliation. Again, once the pieces come together, things will start to get crazy.
- Quality on Poacher's Mark gives us frenzy charges while bossing. The 5% chance is more than enough when we can hit dozens of times per second.
- Cyclone is more of a utility skill for Power Charge on Crit and Maim but it will also do enough damage in the full build to clear out trash for us as well. Be careful using this while leveling vs mobs as it can microstun them which prevents you from getting hit to block and trigger your retaliation skills
- Consecrated Path lets us blink into packs, with our attack speed we don't need Faster Attacks support with it. Bear in mind though that RWoE's aps boost only applies to its main hand hits, for skills that alternate between weapons when dual wielding every other attack you do will be slower.


/Support Gems/

- Expert Retaliation is top priority. We want two of these, though at first one is enough. Livesearch for this while leveling.
- Pulverize helps with clear, Melee Phys is also desirable, Brutality less so as you will probably be using some elemental damage for a while before you get RWoE.
- Mark on Hit is huge for QoL, very high priority.
- Urgent Orders + More Duration will make Vengeful Cry a lot easier to maintain.
- Power Charge on Crit only really works with Cyclone once you have RWoE
- You can use Additional Accuracy on Cyclone to help make Power Charge on Crit more reliable but I couldn't find the sockets for it in the final build.
- Likewise with Life Gain on Hit Support for Cyclone, can be nice earlier on but I can't justify keeping it in the full build


/Auras/

- Can use Precision while leveling to help with accuracy for Precise Technique but will not be necessary for the final build.
- Pride is valuable for boosting our damage, best to have this on a merc as long as they stick to the boss as it means we can fuck off occasionally and not lose the damage ramp from it.
- Flesh and Stone and Blood and Sand together will give us either increased aoe and tankiness or massively increased damage, use the latter whenever you feel safe to do so.
- Purity of Elements can give us big res and ele ailment immunity, or you can use Determination for giga armour.

Gear Progression

/Weapon/

- Early on, take flexible passives on the tree and use whatever drops. Towards the middle of act 2, you want to be using two axes for the axe rage on hit mastery for >30% more damage
- Your damage should be fine entering maps using whatever you've found; focus on getting Replica Wings of Entropy ASAP. This is your best in slot weapon forever.
- Regular Wings of Entropy is a very strong stopgap, it's a common unique unless GGG made it a lot rarer (it did get buffed heavily so we can't be sure)

/Helmet/

- Rare with life and ele/chaos res early, armour base
- Enemies hit recently have less life regen implicit is god tier unless you are using a mark mastery for no regen.
- Devoto's is an option if you want to zoom.
- Abyssus is an endgame chase option if you want to deal giga damage and don't care about leveling any further.

/Body/

- Nothing special here early on, life, ele/chaos res and armour. If using hybrid here you need to spend a point for Iron Reflexes.
- On a good 5+ link you can use ichors/embers to get all max res and block chance. If you don't get block chance on your chest you will likely need to get more from the tree.
- Try to get a good suppression mod on a hybrid base for your endgame chest.

/Gloves/

- Life, ele res, chaos res, rarity, etc.
- Can get more suppression here via implicit and intimidate on hit.
- Can get mana leech here as well
- Tanu Ahi is option, need to take mana cost as life mastery, can't get suppression though and makes gearing for res harder as well so I'm not keep on it

/Boots/

- Armour, fire/chaos res, etc., 30% ms
- Action/movement speed implicit is nice here, cdr is also good. Sapped ground is ideal for further improving tankiness.

/Rings/

- Amethyst rings for chaos res, get life res and attriubtes here
- phys leeched as mana on one of the rings is ideal for endgame setup if you don't have it on gloves, lets you drop Spriit of War.
- Death Rush can make mapping more fun but does nothing vs bosses.
- The Hateful Accuser shouldn't be needed for bosses, don't want to lose Poacher's Mark due to how much recovery and damage it gives us.

/Amulet/

- Whatever you can find early with the usual good stuff
- Anoint Crushing Reply asap for free fortify on hit, cheap to reanoint this as you upgrade your amulet
- Lots of good unique options, Daresso's Salute is a common and powerful option. Block helps us keep the full life effects active most of the time.
- Repica Karui Ward keeps the movement speed of the above at all times but doesn't have the res or as much damage, the AOE is nice though
- Carnage Heart is a very good option for getting extra attributes and damage
- An Eternal Struggle with useful implicits is good, whether it gives cull or madness effect.
- Marylene's Fallacy is best for damage due to RWoE's insane offhand crit chance and Cruel Retort making our mainhand crit for free occasionally as well, with this you will need to lean more into your Rosethorn Tincture window though
- As a very lategame option, No Forgiveness is BiS but it needs Prismatic + Golden oils and you will need a new source of Fortify (probably chest mod)

/Belt/

- Rare leather belt with the usual good stuff early.
- Belt of the Deceiver is good for providing Intimidate if you aren't taking the rage mastery that gives it or using glove mod, and also helps us vs crits
- Arn's Anguish is nerfed because endurance charges are a lot more valuable now, would need Ralakesh boots to use it and they're probably still too rare to think about using in ruthless.
- With Marylene's, Bound Fate can sometimes make us crit with every attack for 5 seconds, but we will sometimes always be crit or take lucky damage, the downsides don't seem worth it to me. RWoE now giving so much offhand crit lowers the value of this belt by a lot
- A good rare Stygian Vise with a strong abyss jewel is generally best in slot. Can get a lot more life this way.

/Flasks+Tincture/

- Two life flasks, one with bleed removal, the other with poison removal. 'Instant when on low life' is the best prefix.
- Quicksilver flask for obvious reasons.
- Rosethorn Tincture with increased effect and melee attack speed mod, can sustain this for a long time easily vs bosses due to Poacher's Mark mana on hit and low attack mana costs.
- Can put 'use when frozen' enchant via Einhar on a utility flask that removes freeze if you want pseudo freeze immunity while mapping, don't need this if running Purity of Elements

/Jewel(s)/

- Would ignore the Jewel socket until you find a CB immunity jewel, want to take the mastery for that via the max res nodes otherwise
- Some Watcher's Eye mods are very good for us, keep an eye out for them (lol)

Bandit

- Usually I would take Kraityn because 8% movement speed is a lot, however the endgame version of this build can get a lot of boosts to movement speed from rage, elusive, etc., so less desirable in the long run
- Can compensate for losing Kraityn early on by capping block with Feline Swiftness
- Runegrafts look very powerful so +1 point from Kill All is probably best now.

Crit

- Before RWoE we can still crit every 4th retaliation skill used, not worth taking any crit chance nodes on tree but Feller of Foes is good.
- Twin Terrors overcaps our crit (while tincture is up with Marylene's, even while tincture it isn't up without it) but we can get 20% chance to gain elusive on block mastery if we take it. Also helps with quick power charge generation.
- Prioritize getting offhand crit capped on tree before taking stuff like Indiscriminate Revenge

Charges

- Frenzy Charges come from Blood Rage while mapping and Poacher's Mark while bossing
- Power Charges come from spinning with Cyclone occasionally to proc Power Charge on Crit.
- Endurance Charges should first come from Inexorable while bossing and Disciple of the Unyielding %chance on kill while mapping, later on can grab a chest mod to sustain them against bosses with 100% increased charge duration mastery

Ailments

- CB immune via tree, can get ele ailment immune with Purity of Elements
- Bleed mastery prevents it dealing more damage when moving + removal on flask should make regular bleed trivial, may want to swap out of this mastery into the crit one if you end up using Marylene's.

Rage

- Berserk is automated because we should be able to mainain 100% uptime on Vengeful Cry and get so much rage on hit, it will bottom out eventually but it will very quickly refill.
- Veteran's Wrath is not needed as you will maintain rage easily without it
- We take Vengeance (%inc armour from rage) so that we can get a rage mastery, can get intimidate here until you have glove mod, movement speed is also very nice, +7 max rage is decent damage for one point.

Block

- Until we have blocked recently we have 70/67 attack/spell block. If we have blocked recently we have 91/89 attack/spell block.
- The lucky block chance helps sustain its own effect as long as we stay in the fray.
- Not hard to get Versatile Combatant attack and spell block to cap with just a bit of investment, Replica Wings of Entropy's extra block chance lowers the necessary investment even further.
- We want both max block masteries so we take Swagger on the endgame tree even though we don't need the frenzies from it.
- Take Dervish before you get the block chance chest mod, can also use block chance tattoos.

Fortify

- Anoint Crushing Reply, done.
- Could get Forify mod on chest to swap out of this but comes at the expense of the block implicit which would force us to get more block on the tree or elsewhere somehow.

Leech/LGoH

- Blood Rage gives us life leech, Spirit of War or ring/glove mod gives us mana leech
- Instant leech mastery was nerfed and isn't really worth 4 points IMO despite how fast we can hit, we still get a lot of extra recovery from Poacher's Mark and the warcry mastery.

Bossing

- Start the fight by using Cyclone until you have 3 power charges, this should be pretty quick and you should also be able to proc a retaliation skill in this time.
- Stand next to the boss and spam your retaliation skills whenever they are available. Keep your Rosethorn Tincture active as long as you can, it should last a while.
- Use Blood Stance for optimal damage, switch to Sand Stance if the boss is doing an attack that might be scary if we fail to block it.
- Reapply Maim every 4 seconds or so by using Cyclone for a split second, power charges will also be maintained with this
- Use War Banner when you get to 50 stacks, make sure this aligns with Tincture uptime and Blood Stance
- Shaper and UE are annoying to fight on this build as failing to block shaper balls hurts like hell, plus we have poor defenses vs degens. Maven is a lot easier by comparison. Sirus can also be a bit annoying.

Respeccing

- Use some free quest respecs to drop Precise Technique once you're taking Cruel Retort
- If you use the '100% damage with hits to ignited enemies' mastery while leveling, swap out of this once you are dropping Weathered Hunter so that you can take some better dps nodes that don't depend on doing fire damage.
- In the act 1 tree I recommend taking the lower path to get Precise Technique online at level 15, if you do this you can swap to the upper path later once you want to take Feline Swiftness to cap block/spell block faster.

Merc

- Better to get offensive aura on Merc as if we stop being near enough to them we don't want to lose some important defenses from a defensive aura.
- Try to find one with Pride, and also preferably one taht doesn't taunt enemies itself as we want to keep things taunted on us.
- Some unique items can be used on Merc to further improve our damage/defenses