[3.3] HC - Cheap and fun Courage of Coward - low life 83/83 MaxBlock Gladiator - 500k Shaper DPS

Hello everyone, and welcome to my max block low life Gladiator build that I play on Incursion HC.

Our HP won't actually at low-life level, but using the Unique belt Coward's Legacy granted us the status of Low Life. By using certain Unique items, we'll take advantage of this status, and also negate the downside of that belt.

You can reach me ingame for question @_Gaia_

How does it work?
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Coward's Legacy enables us to have 120% Block Chance Applied to Spells (from Daresso's Courage), as well as free Onslaught & 100% increased damage (from Dreadbeak). This free us from getting the spell blocks Ascendancy from Gladiator, and getting bleed explosion instead.

Sounds great, but it also comes with heavy downside: You are always cursed with Vulnerability, and curses on you have 50% increased effect.

To combat this, we used a Watcher's Eye with special mod "Unaffected by Vulnerability while affected by Determination". We also use Kaom's Root to completely bypass Temporal Chains. Resists are capped at 126 to comfortably do red map that has Elemental Weakness. Only one curse that we don't care much about is Enfeeble, since it only reduces our damage, not survivability.

Videos
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Tier 16 Underground Sea: https://youtu.be/ZPZ4cSsrUyI

Tier 9 Elder Fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G4hzhMMk-U

Deathless Shaper run: https://youtu.be/v2d55XY3gIM

Tier 11 Physical Reflect + Abyssal Lich: https://youtu.be/Q9Xv26TMZcY

Build Overview
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Pros

  • Extreme tankiness with 83% Chance to Block both Attacks & Spells.
  • Fast and smooth mapping with Gladiator's bleed explosion, one of the mechanic that enable you to clear high level map with much, much lower budget than other builds.

Cons

  • As our main weapon is a Unique item, it is not possible to scale our damage to sky high.
  • Not suitable for starting a league, because of the multiple Unique items required.
  • Core Unique item (Coward's Legacy) might not even exist in future league.

Summary

  • With a total of 20c worth of mandatory Unique items (current price on Incursion SC as I'm writing this guide), you'll have yourself a tanky Gladiator that's very fun & satisfying to map with, can do Uber Lab, Elder, and maybe even Shaper if you're patient enough. Bonus point is when you tell your friends, and they'll be like "WTF? Low life Gladiator??"


My characters & Path of Building guide
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My HC Incursion gears

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Path of Buidling


Skill Tree
Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon
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  • Bandits: Kill all for 2 Passive Points.

Ascendancy


Pantheon

1. Major God: Soul of Arakali
  • Everytime your CWDT triggers Blood Rage followed by Immortal call, you shortly stop taking damage from Blood Rage. This allows you to trigger the effect of this Pantheon which gives you a huge boost to your life regeneration and life leech. Reduced Shock effect and Chaos resistance is also a huge bonus.

2. Minor God: Soul of Ryslatha
  • This is mainly for boss fight. Even though we have lots of block, it's still possible that we get hit once in a while, against bosses that hit really fast. This will help our life flask gain charges even when there's no enemy to kill.

3. Minor God: Soul of Shakari:
  • This is for mapping. Immune to Poison takes away one of the damage type that can bypass block, and also helps against DoT damage.



Skill gems & Links
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Main Link

From the top to bottom is the order of importance.
If you only have a 5L, drop the last one.

Blade Flurry

+ Melee Physical Damage
+ Melee Damage on Full Life
+ Maim
+ Increase Area of Effect / Concentrated Effect (swap for boss)
+ Chance to Bleed / Bloodlust (swap for boss)

Other Links

  • Ancestral Warchief
    + Riposte
    + Reckoning
    + Chance to Bleed
    This is needed for 100% bleed uptime, so we can used Bloodlust on our main skill, and don't have to worry about apply bleed.

  • Leap Slam
    + Faster Attack
    + Fortify
    + Blood Magic
    Our movement skill. Whirling blade is faster, but Leap Slam also cross gap, which is much superior.

  • Cast When Damage Taken
    + Blood Rage
    + Immortal Call
    To trigger Soul of Arakali, Blood Rage has to be linked BEFORE Immortal Call.You can find more information about this here under "3.1 Order" in the wiki.

  • Determination
    + Herald of Ash / Purity of Elements (if gears not capping resist)
    + Tempest Shield
    Determination is a must (see Gears & Breakdown). Then you can use whatever you want: Purity of choice, Arctic Armour, Heralds. Tempest shield for extra block.




Gears Selection & Breakdown
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Weapon & Shield
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  • At first glance, Dreadbeak doesn't seem that great. The DPS top out at around 330 Pdps & the attack speed is slow. However, with it's 100% damage increased on Low Life, it's comparable with a 400 Pdps sword, and that's not counting the Onslaught buff! You can use a better sword with 400+ Pdps for sure, but that'll never beat this 1 chaos sword in the Cost vs. Effectiveness equation.
    Make sure to buy the prophecy for this sword (The Dreaded Rhoa), instead of buying the sword itself. The map required is only tier 10, and the boss is super easy, as long as you don't break his eggs!

  • Daresso's Courage, however, is essential for our build to function. Luckily it is dirt cheap, and everything on it is good for the build. A big bonus is that the "20% Chance to Block Attacks/Spells if you block recently" is great in reduced block map. Try to find ones with good Block Chance & All Resistances rolls.


Body Armours
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Nothing is required for this slot. Priority is Life + Resistances, so you have a wide variety of choices:

  • Tabula Rasa is the starter chest for any build these days. You can use this until you get whatever you want to use later on. It's cheap to get, and you can even farm it yourself in Blood Aqueduct in just 1-2 hours. I'd recommend this until you get a good 5L with a lot of life.

  • Loreweave increases our elemental defense, while providing much needed INT and flat physical damage. Its life is low however, and you'll have a harder time capping resists for ele weaness map (131 res instead of 126).

  • Belly of the Beast is probably the best in slot in temporary league. It gives us huge amount of life, to prevent yourself of getting one shot.

    However, any rare chest with good amount of life, is perfectly okay, and much cheaper than a 6L Belly. You can buy a cheap 6L Armour (or Armour/Evasion) base, and use few Shrieking Essence of Greed on it.

    Standard player also have the option of using Craiceann's Carapace. Good life, resists, high armour, it also prevents bleeding, which is huge for this build.


Helmet, Gloves & Boots
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  • A good helmet with high life & resistances, is what we're looking for. It's very cheap to get a 100+ life helmet with a resist or two. High armor is recommended, but not needed.

  • Kaom's Root is not mandatory for our builds to work, but it's the best in slot. Being immune to Temporal Chains & Freeze + Chill is such a huge quality of life, especially when we have 50% increased effect of curse on ourselves. It also provide a huge amount of life and immunity to sun. Try finding a good life roll one (180+) if you can afford it.

  • Tombfist with 2 x Abyssal Sockets is a great choice for an Attack build (however it's much more expensive than a regular pair of gloves with life + resist). A very notable choice, is Elder gloves with high life & "chance to bock" mod (which can also be crafted from Haku, but at much lower roll).
    Aim for high life > resist > INT > attack speed > flat physical damage.


Rings, Amulet, Belts & Flasks
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  • The Anvil is a must for bossing. Raising our maximum block by 3% while seems meh at first, but it decreases our chance to take damage from 20% to 17%, which is a 15% increase. I mainly use Bloodgrip for mapping, it has high flat phys, life, removes the extra DoT from bleeding, and gives us more life from flask. A rare amulet with high life, resists and flat phys also works.

  • For rings, you want Life > Int > Resists > Physical Damage to Attack, so that we don't need to take any INT node on tree. This is your big sources of resist, as we need 126% resistances, to be capped in Red map's elemental weakness.

  • A life flask with Curse removal is a must, in case you're cursed with both Ele Weakness, and another resistances curse from monster. You DO NOT want it on a duration flask, because it'll also remove Vulnerability from the Belt, which lower our damage and speed.

    The rest of the flasks is entirely up to you, but I'd recommend Lion's Roar, Atziri's Promise, Taste of Haste, Sin's Rebirth, or any other utility Flasks.

  • Coward's Legacy is the core item of our build. Luckily it's not highly sought-after, so getting one is no problem. Vial of Consequences & Coward's Chain cost nothing to begin with, all you need is t3 Apex of Ascension.


Jewels
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  • A Watcher's Eye with "Unaffected by Vulnerability while affected by Determination" is a must, to make us immune to the Belt's downside. This should be your priority.

  • A jewel with "Corrupted Blood cannot be inflicted on you" is huge quality of life. If you don't see any jewel with that mod that you like, considering buying magic jewel that has %life, resists, or any other useful mod, and Vaal it yourself.

  • For other jewels, you'd want life, resistance, physical damage, and maybe INT as well if you gears don't have enough.


What corruption mod to look for?
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Since 3.3 revamped Vaal system, a lot of cool corruption mod has been introduced. Good thing our build use a lot of cheap Unique items, so it won't be hard finding the item to corrupt. If you get really lucky with double corruption it's even better! Here's a list of some really good corruptions that you should aim for:

  • Weapon: %Chance to Fority on Melee Hit frees a gem slot, and is much better since we don't need to use our Movement skills to proc. Resolute Technique frees a skill point. Increased Physical Damage and Attack Speed are both good.

  • Shield: so many good mods, but the best one is probably maximum block chance. Other good ones are: Grants level 23 Determination, Chance to Block, Maximum life, Reduced damage taken from crits, etc...

  • Gloves: Curse Enemy with Vulnerability on Hit is huge for us. Best corruption and should be your top priority.

  • Boots: Kaom's Root has some really good corruption and can be easy to get (from The Throne card). Movement speed, Extra regen while moving, Maximum life, or even Endurance Charges if you want to use Enduring Cry. However, lab enchants are also great for this build, so it's fine to have enchant like Leech, Regen when hit, Attack speed if kill recently.

  • Belt: Since the ES implicit is useless to us, it's an obvious choice to corrupt the belt. Good corruptions are: resitances, life, Determination aura effect, or even increased AoE or Skill Effect Duration.


Questions & Answers
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How do I level with this build?

  • Use Sunder/ Blade Flurry/ Double Strike / Reave, anything you want. If you are on SC, as soon as you have the required Belt + Shield + Weapon, you can use it right away (not recommended for HC until you get the jewel)

Does this mean I'm able to facetank everything in the game?

  • Unfortunately that's not possible with this build. This is created for cheap, fun, safe mapping.

What map mod is not doable with this build?

  • Not doable map mod is No Leech / No regen. Everything else is doable, although some nasty mod combo will always requires caution.
    For physical reflect map, use Yugul pantheon and you should be fine with how much armour we have. Make sure to use Basalt flask for bosses.


IGN: _Gaia_

Where to download my hideout: https://poe.house/hideout/76oNuBpb

Where to trade currency between leagues: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2156864
Last edited by _Gaia_ on Jan 18, 2019, 3:06:03 PM
Last bumped on Jul 28, 2018, 4:11:11 PM
nice build bud...
Who Are We? Where do we come from?

One of the best ideas I've ever seen.

Super gear combination

Good Job

Dave
Nice and unique build!

Question - have you tested the Lori’s lantern ring with this? It might be awful but I’ve always wanted to find a use for it.
Guide is finished.

"
Nice and unique build!

Question - have you tested the Lori’s lantern ring with this? It might be awful but I’ve always wanted to find a use for it.


Yes, I've thought about Lori's Lantern. Unfortunately, it's not very good because of the mechanic of that ring: its "Unlucky effect" only applies to the damage rolls, nothing else (however I understand, it'd be completely broken if it applies to other stats like block, evade).
IGN: _Gaia_

Where to download my hideout: https://poe.house/hideout/76oNuBpb

Where to trade currency between leagues: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2156864
What would you suggest going for on the passive tree while leveling?
"
Phanatchon wrote:
What would you suggest going for on the passive tree while leveling?


I updated the guide with more skill tree at low levels.

You should definitely going to Marauder area to grab Resolute Techique.
After that, aim for mana/life leech node so you can sustain easier in 2nd part of leveling.
Then head to Ranger area, because you can get 7% block chance here, quite important.

You should have all the block nodes by the time you hit map. After that, go for the sword + bleed chance node far left in the tree. Then it's just life + dps nodes while you're cruising map.
IGN: _Gaia_

Where to download my hideout: https://poe.house/hideout/76oNuBpb

Where to trade currency between leagues: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2156864
"
_Gaia_ wrote:
"
Phanatchon wrote:
What would you suggest going for on the passive tree while leveling?


I updated the guide with more skill tree at low levels.

You should definitely going to Marauder area to grab Resolute Techique.
After that, aim for mana/life leech node so you can sustain easier in 2nd part of leveling.
Then head to Ranger area, because you can get 7% block chance here, quite important.

You should have all the block nodes by the time you hit map. After that, go for the sword + bleed chance node far left in the tree. Then it's just life + dps nodes while you're cruising map.



thanks

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