Level 99 CI Crit Dominating Blow of Inspiring Guardian^3.28

Notes

SUPER IMPORTANT SPECTRE WARNING (DO NOT IGNORE)- WHEN YOU USE SPECTRES DO NOT TAKE THE GEM OFF UNLESS YOU ARE IN HIDEOUT. DON'T TAKE PIECE OF GEAR OFF UNLESS YOU'RE IN HIDEOUT. IF YOU DO ADJUST GEAR, 
REMEMBER TO RESUMMON IT AFTER.  IT'S NOT MY FAULT IF YOU NUKE AN EXPENSIVE SPECTRE.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

IF YOU IGNORE THIS I WILL VICTIM BLAME. :3

A couple notes on the notes - I formatted it in such a way that each section is (mostly) quarantined for eachother. This is mostly so people don't get overwhelmed by a huge wall of text and can take it step by step. If you're looking for more notes,
scroll down and I probably address it in the next section. 

If I don't address your particular concern, or you have a question, you can catch me when I'm live! (twitch.tv/ArminYou_ or youtube.com/Armin_You) or in my community discord (link: ). I stay active in all 3. 
If you leave your concern there I will see it and respond to it as best I can. 

POB is a heavy work in progress, I will be updating it as the league start goes on. If you have a feeling something is missing, check the video or reddit post to see if it's been updated.

TABLE OF CONTENTS -

Leveling Section (A1-A10)

Early Mapping (2-4 Stone)

1h Swap (Prolly 4 Stone?)

Midgame (atlas complete, into your farming strat)

Endgame (Juicing)

If you're looking for Mageblood+ levels of investment, I have a separate POB here (link: ) 

- Leveling Section -

- Act 1 -

You'll need to mule for a Momentum using Ranger. Check vendors for links/belts before dumping in stash. If you don't get a R-R-R aim for having a Rustic Sash and an Iron RIng. Also be on the lookout for a shield that's equippable at level 4.

Past Beach you'll want to use Smite for Mud Flats and Tidal Island. It doesn't need to be linked to anything, but you can buy a Ruthless if you feel so inclined (you'll need it later). Equip the Driftwood Sceptre Hillock drops and dual wield. This is primarily
for the attack speed.

Past level 4 we use Shield Charge for damage. This is linked to Chance to Bleed and ideally Momentum (but a 2l is fine). This in combination with Summon Holy Relic and Holy Flame Totem will be sufficient damage to clear act 1 up to Merveil.
You unironically just Shield charge through enemies until they die. Holy Relic will do a pulse with each target you hit, and this will be enough to wipe up white mobs and make XPing feel *smooth*. The Chance to Bleed on Shield Charge gives us a big
DOT for single target and anything we manage to hit, and it will feel relatively fat due to the flat damage on the gem. If you have R-R-R instead you can run Added Fire Damage, which you will be running later.

For Brutus specifically, just charge back and forth through him until he does his triple ground pound. He shouldn't really be able to hit you if you do this right. Repeat until he's dead.

After Brutus check Nessa for a Jade Amulet. You'll need it to help keep your Precision leveled throughout Campaign.

Nessa will give you a quest reward for a gem. Make sure to grab a Blue gem. Sell the gem and your Iron Ring to a vendor and this will give you a Sapphire Ring for Merveil. This will give you cold resistance which will make you significantly tankier against
Merveil.

Before Merveil you  *should* have 3 Orbs of Transmutation. You need one for Precision, one for Sunder, and one for Intimidating Cry. If you need to come back in a2 for Precision that's totally fine, just make sure you have Sunder and Intimidating 
Cry for Merveil. You should also ideally have a R-R-R item by now. If you only have a R-R you want to prioritize Chance to Bleed. 

From here you Sunder things you want to kill until they die. If you're in single target make sure to use Intimidating Cry on cooldown for 2 double damage hits. Do this to Merveil until she's dead. This setup procs a big bleed, and if you crit can proc a
big ignite. 

Even though you're swapped to Sunder, make sure to keep your Summon Holy Relic in your offhand.

- Act 2 -

Pick up Herald of Ash after The Chamber of Sins. Bum Rush Spiritual Aid on the tree and upgrade your weapon base.

After Weaver, talk to Silk to get a new support gem. if you have a big phys weapon you *can* swap Added Fire Damage to Melee Physical Damage support to make your bleeds biggerbut you have enough crit that ignites are actually something 
to consider damage wise. Still, keep it in your offhand as it's our 4th link once we get one. 

For our Bandit we Help Alira. This effectively solves our pre-kitava resistance.

- Act 3 - 

After the Crematorium grab Vulnerability from Clarissa. Around this point you can start gambling for 4 links from Marmoa. Be sure to check vendors for links and a Prismatic Tincture.

If you've leveled a slams character before you've probably felt the lack of Faster Attacks and Blood Rage. You can go into the Library and complete Siosa's quest to get these if you really feel the speed loss, otherwise grab them in a6 from Lily Roth.
You can also consider grabbing Convocation from him post Lab.

Now, coming out of Lab we grab Radiant Crusade, giving us Sentinel of Radiance (I'll be calling him Robert from here on, or Hot Bob for short.) He clears enough that you should be able to skip white packs and hatecrime the Blue packs and Yellow 
monsters. 

- Act 4 - 

Grab Fist of War after Malachai, start thinking about getting overcapped resistances (105%) before act 5.

- Act 6 -

Once you complete Lily Roth's quest to clear the strand, grab a Dominating Blow, Raise Spectre, and level them in your offhand. By this point you should also have the Sovereignty notable on tree. If you're struggling on Resistances socket in a 
Purity of Elements. This gives you 20% to all elemental resistances (huge) and immunity to elemental ailments. This means you fear no strongbox. 

You can also swap out Vulnerability for Assasin's Mark linked to Mark on Hit. Be on the lookout for Staff bases as this is a very good time to swap your weapon.

- Act 7 -

In *zone*, return the Silver Locket to Weylam and he will give you a quest reward for a Diamond Flask. This is a deterministic way to get one in campaign. 

- Act 8 - 

From Lab grab the Unwavering Crusade node. This gives you Elemental Relics which give you the 3 major damage auras, giving you a huge amount of flat to play around with. All of it gets increased due to our generic scaling.

- Act 10 - 

Run Merciless Lab until you get Dominating Blow of Inspiring and swap. If you're in trade you can skip this and go straight to mapping, buying it when you can. Ideally get some quality on it too if you can stomach the farming.
Bastion of Hope gives you a decent chunk of block, helping you feel defensively much thicker. For the swap you also want to make sure you're running Determination and Purity of Elements. 
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TRIBAL FURY OR IT WILL FEEL LIKE SHIT. I would also make sure you're on Staff as a weapon base if possible. Follow the gem links in the POB. 

If you have a particularly big Axe or Mace, both of those are fine to run, but you'll eventually need to swap to Staves for the crit and block they offer.

Ideally get quality on your Assassin's Mark and your Dominating Blow of Inspiring. Both of those have high quality value. You can wait until you have access to Uber Lab to make it a bit easier. Prioritize Dominating Blow as we have a Spectre and
staff notables that can make up for a bit of a lack in quality on our Assassin's Mark.

Now that you're swapped there are two spectres you want to grab. To make sure you're summoning the right ones, hold A on your keyboard and hover over the corpse to see it's name. As for the spectres you want to grab, the Stygian Silverback 
will give you Frenzy charges. The Host Chieftain will generate you Power charges. You can get both from a7 Ashen Fields. Importantly, you need the minion cooldown recovery mastery to get perma charge uptime on single target.

If you're finished with campaign and wish to read the mapping notes SCROLL DOWN THERE'S MORE.



























There's more down here :3







- Early Mapping - 

First priority is a 5 link chest. Once you have the right sockets and have capped elemental resistances, every piece of gold should be dumped into Faustus gambling until you a 5 link chest. In trade you can usually just go buy one for anywhere
between 1-5c. Make sure it's an Armour base and ideally a Golden Plate or better in terms of basetype. The higher the base the better the armour. You can check basetypes here: 


IMPORTANT QOL READ ME -
You want to be on the lookout for Viridian Jewels. To make the build comfier, you need a Viridian Jewel with a Mana Leech modifier. Alt spam it if you have to. If you can get other mods - great! But really hard prioritize the mana leech.
Until then you can use an Enduring Mana Flask.

For your other gear, just identify it off the ground. If you're invested in Breach you can get great gear from the tree. If you like Expedition, you can also get great gear off Rog. Betrayal can also get you decent 3-4 mod items depending on how much you run. 
Just pick one mechanic and run it, you will either get currency to craft gear, or the gear itself. 

Rush Eater/Exarch. Consider swapping to 1h shield if you get a big 1h weapon, but probably just use staves early. Recipe can get you a guaranteed 500 dps staff, you can also get a 1h mace instead but you're working with something like a 300dps weapon then. 
Also base crit is worse on Mace. Other Weapons are possible but don't have as effecient of points, have worse charge gen, and have higher attribute requirements. While eventually we swap to shields, it's a bit prohibitive to gear like that early due to 
point cost and bad crit. After clearing Eater/Exarch, I would recommend clearing your atlas and farming until you have enough currency and points to get into an atlas strategy

You want as high of DPS on your staff as you reasonably can get. 500 dps is a floor, but I'd shoot for 700-800 dps. EVEN FLAT CHAOS DAMAGE IS GOOD DAMAGE, ALL OUR SCALING IS GENERIC.

Every bit of gold will go towards Faustus gambling until you have a 5 link. Gamble an Armour base. Once you have that make sure to establish disenchanters in Kingsmarch. We will use them later for Recombinating, it's best to take any uniques and
dump them in there now so we have dust when we need it.

Shoot for around 10-15k Armour and 4-4.5k life or so. One of your pieces will likely be Armour/Evasion, and one of them will likely have to be Armour/ES. This is due to the B-B-B-B and G-G-R links we have on our gear.

Make sure you get Accuracy somewhere (Often Rings, Gloves, and Helmets are good. At least 200 or so.) You have Purity of Elements, so that's effectively +3 suffixes you can find it on. Also, prioritize higher life on gear once you have resistances
capped. Shoot for around 100 per piece (besides chest, which we use the life mastery for). 

Run EVERY Delirium you see. You want to fish for a Minion Damage Cluster. Even a bad cluster is still 10% damage per node, which is effectively 30% for us. This also means we want to pick up every Bone Ring we see, fishing for Minion Attack Speed
and Minion Damage. Eventually you will just buy a base to craft on.

Once you hit red maps, there will be Gemini Claws on the filter. Make sure to pick these up as you go. We'll be using them to recombinate our midgame weapon later. Also be on the lookout for a solid enough shield for our 1h swap. 

If you're finished with early mapping and want to go to 1h Swap, SCROLL DOWN:























There's more down here :3



















- 1h Swap -

There are a few important breakpoints for swapping to 1h. 

You really want to be level 85+. You can swap beforehand but you're sacrificing a decent chunk of either block or damage. You also need a pretty big 1h weapon for the damage to feel closer to your staff. For this, you'll want a weapon with 2 t3+
damage prefixes, preferably some attack speed, and crafted Hits Can't Be Evaded. You can identify this off the ground. Make sure you're looking for open prefixes. If you're crafting, Essences will probably be the cheapest way to go about this. Use
whatever the cheapest elemental essence is (either Hatred, Wrath, or Anger essences) at Screaming or above. I would recommend crafting on a Claw as a base. Imperial is probably the best option, but if you don't quite have the Attribute requirements 
you can use a Noble Claw instead.

You're aiming for 2 t3+ flat elemental damage rolls alongside Attack Speed and an open prefix. You can identify this off the ground, be on the lookout for Attack Speed, t3+ Elemental Damage and an open prefix. There's a good example of the item
in the gear section. Once you have this, craft Hit's Can't Be Evaded and you have your weapon. Once you socket this weaopn, be sure to take Precision off and respec the Accuracy points on your tree.

There are some other weapon options you can use if you identify a good base off the ground or find one on trade. Here's a list of bases and their benefits:

Wide-Sword (Eternal Sword) -
Fits attribute requirements pretty well and gets us a mastery for Frenzy Charge generation or Strike Range, but has lower base crit and attack speed than claws. Though we do get access to Vaal Smite for an extra damage button.

Axe -
Fits attribute requirements and gets access to a pretty solid annoint in Hatchet Master. 

Ultimately I would recommend Claw. It fits our attribute requirements very easily while giving a decent chunk of crit and being very easy to craft. We also end up pressing less buttons. Though it is technically a damage loss. 

For some budget uniques, Rebuke of the Vaal (or any big 1 hand weapon) combined with the unique shield Lycosidae will get you farming t16s. Lycosidae gives us Hits Can't Be Evaded and is fairly common. Using this actually lets you use any 1h weapon 
as long as you have the attribute requirements. 

Frostbreath is also a very solid unique for this setup since our Elemental Relics give us lots of flat for the Frostbreath to double. 

For non-lycosidae shields The Surrender and it's Foulborn variation are both very strong. If you're using the Fouldborn variant make sure you're investing in good bases for your gear, as ES becomes more important then. Otherwise a budget Shaper
Life or ES Gain on Block shield is a great investment as well.

Adding this to the end of the section, but it's important to be looking for 6 links by this point. You can buy them off trade, farm them from Breach tree, or put in some good old fashioned elbow grease and Fuse one yourself. However you go about it
get a 6l soon. 

If you can afford it, buy a Farrul and run it for the Ascendancy. It's a huge amount of damage and speed.

If you're swapped to 1h and looking for Midgame SCROLL DOWN.






















There's more down here :3





















- Midgame - 

Get Farrul ascendancy as fast as humanly possible. The amount of Speed, Crit, and Damage you get is hard to overstate. By this point we for sure swap to 1h weapons. 

You ideally want a Brutal Restraint conquered by Nasima. The cheapest one here is fine as the modifiers on it aren't massively impactful. Since our weapon has Hits Can't Be Evaded, we simply don't care about the downside of being blind and this 
gets us very easy crit cap. It also lets us take any points we might invest into accuracy and put them into things like Minion Damage and more character thickness. Eventually you'll want to upgrade to one with Minion Damage on certain notables, 
for now just get one period. 

For weapon crafting we will be recombinating. You'll need a decent chunk of weapon bases. You can either:

Get a Fractured weapon base with t2+ of an elemental damage modifier. This can be any of the major elemental damage modifiers, be that Lightning, Cold, or Fire. Then you take an Essence that has a different modifier you want. 
This can be either Hatred, Wrath, Anger, or Zeal Essences depending on what's cheap at the time. 

You then roll until you have two t2+ elemental damage rolls on the weapon, Attack Speed, Critical Strike Chance, and an open prefix. You then craft Hits Can't Be Evaded and it's done!

EXAMPLE: You have a Fractured t2 Fire Damage Noble Claw. You use Essences of Wrath to roll for Lightning Damage, Attack Speed, and some level of Crit with an open prefix. By the time you have Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Lightning and Fire Damage,
you can simply craft Hits Can't Be Evaded on the bench and your claw is done. 

OR

You want to use Orbs of Alteration on some Imperial Claw bases until you get various t2+ Elemental Damage rolls and Attack Speed claws. You want to combine the modifiers until you have 3 modifiers on a single base. 

EXAMPLE -

You have a t2 Fire Damage claw, a t2 Lightning Damage claw, and a t2+ Attack Speed Claw. You use the Random Recombinator to combine the Fire Damage and Lightning Damage on the same claw. This can fail, you will simply need to brute force
it. Combine them until you have a successful recombination. Then, once you have those two on the same base, Random Recombinate those with your Attack Speed Claw. This can also fail, you will simply need enough bases to brute force it. You may
need to craft suffixes or prefixes on the items to reduce the cost. This is fine as you can clean the modifiers later with the Remove Crafted Modifiers bench modifier. 

Once you've successfully recombinated a claw that has two of either t2+ Fire Damage, t2+ Lightning Damage, or t2+ Cold Damage and attack speed, you craft Can Have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers mod. You need to do Cowards Trial to get this craft.
Then you craft Critical Strike Chance and Hits Can't Be Evaded alongside those and you're done. 

WHAT DO I DO IF?

I get Attack Speed and a Damage Modifier on the same claw? Then take another flat damage modifier and random recombinate them together. The process doesn't change whether it's a prefix or suffix in this case. 

If I recombinate t2+ of ALL the Elemental Damage mods on one claw? Sell that shit my sibling in the lord. If you really want to test your luck, craft Prefixes Can't Be Changed and Reforge Speed. This can fill your suffixes, but if you're particularly lucky
you'll get a high tier Attack Speed modifier. You can then craft crit and sell it to some random ranger probably running Frostblades or Lightning Strike. If you're SSF cry, consider a reroll, or get some accuracy and use it. 

You could also identify items off the ground or search for them on trade and use the deterministic recombinator to try and get 2 of these mods on the same item. You then take a different item that you alt spammed to have the missing modifier.

You want 2 t2+ elemental damage rolls and attack speed on the same weapon.

You then multi-mod and craft Hit's Can't Be Evaded and Critical Strike Chance. With that your weapon is done! 

Any way you decide to skin this cat I wish you luck.

Crafting Armour -

You have two efficient options for this tier of gearing:

Essence Spamming on Fractrured Gear is your best bet. If you're SSF or poor get fractures from the Breach Tree. Then you very simply take an essence that guarantees a modifier you want and spam them on items until you get 3-4 good mods and
bench craft your last one. 

EXAMPLES - 

You need gloves. You buy or drop a fractured 34% Cold Resistance pair of Paladin Gloves. You then use Essences of Greed until you get 1-2 additional good modifiers. Say you roll t3 Lightning Resistance and t4 Armour/Energy Shield. Bench Craft 
another resistance or Minion Damage on the prefix and bang, you've got a good item. 

We'll do another. Say you need a body armour. You buy a 6 link base off the market (maybe Paladin's Hauberk? Whatever Armour/ES base you can afford.) You then spam an Essence of Envy on it until you get t3 Cold Resistance, t3 Armour/Evasion,
and craft either more Armour/ES on the prefix or Resistance on the suffix should you need it. 

Most notable pieces are the +2 Minion Helmet and the Darkness Enthroned. 

Darkness Enthroned you can get from farming Abyss or buying it off trade. Shouldn't be much more than a Div or so. For the Jewels you want to either buy a fracture of a mod you want that's cheap (either Bleed, Poison, Minion Skills, Life can be cheap
if it's low tier/low level). Then you can harvest spam them with life or Defenses depending fracture you buy until you get 3 alright mods. 

For the helmet you need to get a +2 minion base from either Harvest or Expedition.

If rancour sticks around through harvest, it's about a 1/10 rate to reforge into a minion helm.

From there if you have 

*unfinished crafting section*

From either Harvest reforge minion (requires crystallized rancour currently at a 1/10 rate) or expedition rog crafting get yourself a +2 minion helmet. 
From there if open both prefixes are open you can use low tier essences (weeping and below and only for woe and doubt) to transfer the prefix to a good base if it isnt already on a good one 
once you get it on a good base and you have 4 mods 1 prefix (minion gems) 3 random suffixes from either luck or eldrich exalt. if you miss repeat the essence step

Crafting Jewelery -

Either get fractures/bases from the Breach tree and use an attribute essences if you need them

OR

Run some harvest and use a resistance reforge to get a 2 decent enough resistances on a good  and 70+ life. Then craft - mana cost and you're done. 

At the end of the day most jewellery crafting is Harvest or Breach based. 

Animate Guardian Swap -

We swap Summon Holy Relic with Animate Guardian here. You can do it earlier if you want. You'll need to pick up some uniques for him. There is a budget gear set you can check out in the items section, but I'll list out the options here. 

Dying Breath - 
Gives us 18% increased damage and *technically* some aura effect. I factored in the damage but the aura effect is copium.

Leer Cast -
Same deal, gives us 50% increased damage and is cheaper than alternatives. Small but meaningful.

Legacy of Fury - 
This gives enemies Scorch. Since we're in melee, enemies should basically always be scorched. IMPORTANT - THIS IS A DAMAGE LOSS WITH INVERT THE RULES. DO NOT USE IT WITH INVERT THE RULES.

Ambu's Charge or Gruthkul's Pelt -
Gives our Animate Guardian a bunch of regen and other stats. Keeps them alive. Good budget option. Notably Ambu's gives you Endurance Charge generation on single target, which you might not have from a different source depending on your spectres. 

Intimidate on Hit Gloves -
You can roll these using Exarch embers. This means you don't need to run the Rage mastery on tree and gives you a point that goes right into a minion damage cluster. 

SPEAKING OF -

Minion Damage Cluster - 

Now is the point where you want to keep this on your radar. You want a 11+ (ideally 12 but 11 is cheaper) Minion Damage Cluster with Increased Effect and no notables. Ideally there are some other modifiers you care about, 
but they're variable depending on what you want to craft/can afford so here's some options.

Energy Shield/Life -
More hitpool more good. It's as shrimple as that.

Minion Attack/Cast Speed - 
Since we have Spiritual Command, this means more speed for us.

Resistances - 
Helps counteract our Bonemeld, very nice to have.

Ultimately though none of this matters if you don't have increased effect. Get increased effect on it, and fill the stats from there based on what you can afford. I put a really shitty cluster in the POB, go for better than that.

Here's when we can start thinking about non-campaign spectres. Here's some options to pick up when you can afford them.

IMPORTANT - TO GET A THIRD SPECTRE YOU NEED A LEVEL 25 GEM. YOU CAN GET THIS FROM A LEVEL 21 BASE GEM + BONEMELD AND MINION HELM. 

You can also get a 4th/5th with Congregation Support on gems and Death Attunement on tree. 

Perfect Guardian Turtle -
Gives you a Determination and lets you run a different aura. You can run Flesh and Stone for more defenses, Haste or Herald of Purity for more damage. With Herald of Purity, Divine Sentinel support can be something to think about, but it's
very important to get a phys based weapon before that.

Perfect Blasphemer -
Gives a Discipline Aura. Sold alternative to Guardian Turtle.

Perfect Forest Warrior -
Grants us Onslaught and Culling Strike. Very strong and lets you swap out your Silver Flask with something different, be that Granite for defenses or Quartz for some utility. 

Perfect Warlord - 
This gives us Endurance Charge generation, a Vitality Aura, and lets us drop some points on tree to get more into our minion clusters. Bonus of keeping our other spectres alive as well.

Pale Seraphim - 
Makes enemies take 15% increased Damage. 

My setup usually goes Stygian Silverback, Forest Warrior, Warlord, then Guardian Turtle when I can afford it. Though it's flexible.  If you run a Forest Warrior swap out your Silver Flask. You can go Quartz for utility or Granite for armour.

Another important unique is a Watcher's Eye jewel. While normally this would give a modest benefit for a different build, due to the nature of this one we have the potential to be affected by 7 or more applicable auras for the purposes of Watcher's Eye.
This means we can very easily get a two or even three mod jewel, and when combined these effects can be very powerful. I'll leave a trade site link with applicable modifiers for the MIDGAME PORTION of this build. Buy what you can afford. If you can 
only pick one mod, you should go for one of the 3 mods listed below.

Some notable mods:

SUPER WANT (solves block or other)

- Determination Block Chance - The POB factors this in, but you can technically solve it elsewhere or ignore it entirely. 7% block is a lot of defense, but there are some offensive options that are potentially more worth.

- Wrath Energy Shield Leech - This gives us a ton of extra recovery. Very nice if you're running something like Delve, where degens can heavily hurt ES based builds.

- Hatred Increased Critical Strike Chance - The fattest damage this side of the missisipi. 1%+ extra base crit is insane, and basically caps our crit. If you want more damage, this is the mod you should take. Though fair warning, they're typically expensive
even for a single mod version of this jewel. But getting one with multiple *shouldn't* be too insane.

If you have extra budget and are looking for a marginal upgrade, look at the ones below for a second modifier-

Nice to Have (try to fill whichever one you pick with one of these mods, ultimately lower leverage)

- Wrath Critical Strike Chance - This can be very nice to have alongside a defensive mod. Worse than Hatred crit, but still does a lot for getting us capped. Very worthwhile investment for the extra cost.

- Anger Critical Strike Multiplier - If your crit is already solved, this is a great option for more damage. Up to 50% is better than you can get on basically any jewel for this build. And getting it alongside a defensive mod? Gigantic.

- Purity of Elements Chaos Resistance - Also usually an expensive mod on it's own, but can be worth depending on what your Chaos Res situation is looking like. It's effectively +2 suffixes on gear, either making it easier to gear or getting you more damage
elsewhere.

- Determination Armour Increase - If you take an offensive mod instead, this can be a worthy alternative to get you a bit more flat armour to scale. Makes your *potential* Aegis swap much better, and gives a modest improvement to phys max hit.

Alternate Amulet Options -

IMPORTANT - IF YOU SWAP YOUR AMULET YOU WILL NEED TO USE DEATH ATTUNEMENT OR AN EMPOWER/CONGREGATION WITH YOUR RAISE SPECTRE TO HAVE 3. THIS IS IMPORTANT, THESE ARE A LOT OF DAMAGE AND UTILITY.

Should you want more damage, there are other amulets you can run. Though you do lose out on some defenses from Bonemeld. Here's a rundown of potential options.

Yoke of Suffering -
Gets you a ton of increased damage from ailments. Semi-conditional, but super worth if you're just going for pure damage.

Ashes of the Stars - 
Relatively cheap unique in trade at this point, but it is an uber drop. It gives us more quality on our Dominating Blow of Inspiring. It is a huge amount of damage, and is less conditional than Yoke of Suffering.



































- ENDGAME -

BIG NOTE - YOU NEED THE ENERGY SHIELD MASTERY WITH 50% OF YOUR ENERGY SHIELD ADDED TO STUN THRESHOLD. DON'T GET STUNNED, IT'S NOT FUN. :(

For Endgame, since you're swapping to Chaos Innoculation (CI), I would recommend waiting to swap until level 95+ and you have the chest crafted at the bare minimum. While you can do this swap earlier, it probably won't feel very good unless you meet
these targets:

8k ES with Bonemeld Effects up

Perfect Guardian Turtle (You can run without this, you just have to drop Divine Sentinel Herald of Purity for your own Determination.)

12 Passive Minion Cluster with Increased Effect, Energy Shield, and Elemental Resistance

Once you have these you can CI swap, but truthfully I'd just farm out the gear and full swap once you have it together. It's not an insane undertaking to just farm out for a bit on the midgame setup.

For your weapon you'll want to use a heist base. Anarchic Spiritblade is the best option as it gives us 100% of our Physical Damage converted to Elemental Damage. This means we can make full use of the Invert the Rules support. This also allows us
to use Phys as Extra effects to increase our damage a great deal, expanding the range of potential Watcher's Eye modifiers we can make use of. Ultimately this is the option I would recommend, and would probably be easy enough to self-farm in SSF. 

An alternate option if it's cheaper is running a Void Fangs Claw. This gives you Chaos Damage and can allow you to use Unholy Trinity support, freeing up some space on tree and letting you ignore resistances instead of inverting them. The alt tree 
doesn't go too in depth on the major differences, but you can start stacking flat lightning and chaos damage on Murderous Eye Jewels and scale your damage in a way that is less reliant on crit. Typically best used alongside an Elegant Hubris jewel.
You should also get a better source of Wither.

Ultimately if you're SSF and don't want to run heist at all, just running a Gemini Claw base will do fine. You lose out on a bit of damage and would want to pivot your Divine Sentinel Herald of Purity to something else (maybe Haste :0?) 
But it's definitely doable.

For Spectres, as mentioned earlier, you really want these Ritual Spectres. The list is as follows:

- Perfect Forest Warrior gives us Onslaught and Culling Strike.

- Perfect Guardian Turtle gives us Determination.

- Stygian Silverback will be our Frenzy generation. You can use the sword mastery instead and swap the Spectre out for something else but I prefer the strike range at this level of investment. 

- Perfect Warlord will give us a Vitality Aura (usable because we have Zealot's Oath) and Endurance Charge generation.

You don't have to upgrade them all right away, I'd make sure to get Perfect Guardian Turtle first though. It's by far the most important IMO. 

VERY IMPORTANT - TO SUMMON 4 SPECTRES YOU NEED A LEVEL 25 RAISE SPECTRE AND ANNOINTED DEATH ATTUNEMENT. There are other ways to skin this cat (Congregation Support, Empower) but this is the one I chose as it gives us more
supports to help keep them alive and near us for buff uptime. 

To achieve a level 25 gem we get:

- A level 21 Raise Spectre

- +2 From our Helmet

- +2 From Bonemeld

You can even get more than this, but I found sorta diminishing returns. There are some crazy spectres out there though, so do your own research and customize your spectre setup to your liking. The only hard mandatory spectre IMO is Perfect
Guardian Turtle. Everything else is taste.

As for our Animate Guardian, there are some notable swaps to make if you can afford it.

Kingmaker - 
Swapping this out for Dying Breath would be huge for damage. 50% Critical Strike Multiplier, Culling Strike, and 10 Fortify is very solid. Lets us swap one of our supports to something higher damage and gives us a huge amount of crit multi.
Typically farily expensive though.

Garb of the Ephemeral - 
This gets you Crit Immunity while your Animate Guardian is nearby. Not technically full uptime, so I didn't include it in the config, but you'll definitely notice it on crit maps.

Shaper Helmet -
Shaper Helmets have a modifier that says Nearby Enemies Take 6% increased Elemental Damage. This elevates to 9%. Can be very worthwhile pickup if someone failed their elevating of a mod, otherwise stick with the 6%, I don't think it's worth an
expensive orb to roll for. You could also go for a corrupted helmet that gives enemies Malediction, and that is better but a LOT more expensive. 

Brittle/Sap Exarch Boots -
Brittle gives us 2% Base Critical Strike Chance when an enemy stands on it. Most noticable in single target, I haven't included it in the POB at all. Though it's for sure noticable when you put it on. If you're sub-crit cap, this can push you over the edge.
If you're over crit cap, you can use Sap boots. These make the enemy deal 20% less damage when standing on the ground it produces. Again, not included in the defensive calculations but definitely noticable.

Rungraft of Treachery gives you a decent chunk of Reservation Efficiency for 1 point. Definitely worth a pickup. If you need to for a bit grabbing the efficiency node before Influence can get you a bit on tree, but single points in the endgame section
are hugely valuable, so even if it's a bit spendy or time consuming it's worth the upgrade.

As for why the Rage is increased by 5 in the Endgame POBs vs Midgame, the answer is PADDING. A round 10 mil number is nice for advertising. And the kind people like you that care to read the full guide will understand, right?. Ultimately I tried to
keep the configuration beyond reasonable. I could've padded that number harder by including the culling strike from Perfect Forest Warrior or Kingmaker, which by that level of gear you would have. Ultimately my goal is to undersell in the POB so
it feels better than it looks in game. You'll have to let me know how I did :3.

Anarchic Spirtblade Crafting - 

Ideally you buy a fracture or fracture it yourself. To craft the sword in the POB you will need:

- The base (fractured and unfractured are both fine, unfractured will simply take longer.) 

- Essences of Zeal

- At least 3 Divines (probably more). 

Step 1 -
Roll your sword until you hit t2+ flat Physical Damage, t2+ % Increased Physical Damage, and Essence Attack Speed with an open prefix and suffix. You can use an Orb of Annulment to open a suffix if you need, but if the suffix is something you already want
then craft prefixes can't be changed and you're done! (you want either crit chance or crit multi, but preferably crit chance.)

Step 2 - 
Craft "Cannot Roll Attack Mods" on the sword.

Step 3 -
Use Orbs of Annulment to "clean" the modifiers on the weapon. You want only those 3 modifiers on it. If you annul off your Cannot Roll Attacks, simply recraft it until you clean the modifiers that need to be taken off off.

Step 4 - 
You craft "Can Have Multiple Crafted Modifiers" on it alongside Critical Strike Chance and Hits Can't Be Evaded, and your weapon is done! You can use this theoretically for the lifetime of the character. 

To fracture a sword yourself, use Essences of Zeal until you have 3-4 desirable modifiers (Physical Damage, Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Multiplier,) and then slam the item and prayge. If it misses cry.