[3.15] The Oath Keeper - A Death's Oath build by the person behind the item
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Introduction
Death's Oath still being viable since Harbinger league, having played it every league and reaching 5 lvl 100's (soon to be 6 this league) has been my most exciting time in Path of exile and I'm very excited to show my latest iteration of the build. This build can get quite expensive if aiming for end-game content as well as complicated for newer players so I could never really recommend this build unless you're very dedicated, But feel free to ask me if anything is unclear. The goal of this build is to get the most out of Death's Oath while still trying to make a solid build overall. _________________________________________________________________________________ Build overview
Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
My gear in Expedition
Skilltree
Pantheons
Lunaris for major
Abberanth for minor _________________________________________________________________________________ Gearing, gems and options
Chest
I bet this one came as a huge surprise! Death's Oath is required as it grants Death Aura which is the basis of the entire build. Outside of the necessities it also grants a large amount of all attributes that we will need for a lot of skillgems and gear, the life mod isn't bad either. These are the optimal links in Death's Oath but there's a budget alternative, swapping Awakened increased area of effect for less duration. Not only is the gem cheaper but it also makes colouring Death's Oath easier since it requires one less off colour making it cheaper on that front too.
Other alternatives
Weapon
The Kane of Kulemak will almost certainly be a requirement for red maps to be smooth to play as it gives the biggest damage upgrade out of any item we can get our hands on These are the perfect modifiers but should you struggle to find this exact version you could substitute the cast speed for something else granted that will be a detriment to the feel of clearing since we're using Body Swap to move.
Budget option
The Kane of Unraveling is practically the baby version of Cane of Kulemak, it's worse in almost every way but it gets the job done early mapping. I would strongly recommend upgrading before doing red tier maps.
Helmet
For our helmet we wanna get two important things, the despair enchant as well as the nearby enemies have reduced chaos resistance. Once you have these any life and resists are more then helpful to fill out the rest of the item, also crafted area size/dmg would be good too if possible. The budget option of this item would simply be a high life/es hubris with resists.
Gloves
Small disclaimer here, my setup is a little scuffed for the video purposes and is missing a curse since I had to fiddle around to remove my HH for the vid. I would use a despair on hit ring as an alternative to these gloves Now this is where we'll be putting our Bodyswap curse on hit setup as the item grants extra levels to our curses. Budget option would simply be rare apothecary gloves with life and resists, substitute the curse on hit corruption for a despair on hit ring.
Boots
The boots are about as straight forward as it can get, Movement speed, life and high resists is what you're looking for. High end items would include cannot be chilled as well as cannot be frozen. A little bit about gem choices here, Desecrate is a bit of an odd one but having it to traverse ledges using Bodyswap is important and Molten shell may be substituted for Steel skin if your armour is low. Only put temp chains blasphemy here if you're running solstice vigil as it reduces the cost to 0%
Belt
Again, pretty straight forward. you would get life and high ES as well as %chaos dmg etc using hunter influence if possible. You could also use the belt to solve strength issues but that means you wouldn't use resistance catalysts as efficiently if you got really high resist rolls. I use HH for extra zoominess which makes reworking the build slightly difficult for making this guide, but IF you have a HH it solves a lot of dex/str issues.
Rings
The rings I've got have the essence mod from envy essences as well as crafted damage for maximum damage, outside of this the rings are mostly a stat dump for life and trying to get the remaining resists or attributes. Budget options would simply be life, attribute and resist rings with crafted damage
Amulet
for the amulet we're looking to maximize damage as chaos multiplier is harder to come by this league. The +1 is good but you would most likely drop this for other stats or potentially malevolence reduced cost for using flesh and stone. We anoint Method to the Madness for some extra damage, capping chaos resistance and upping our max res to negate more damage taken from Death aura, but Growth and decay is a strong alternative for anoint as well. Solstice vigil doubles up as both a budget option (a few weeks into league) and the end game option if you've got that juicy HH. I would use the previously shown rare amulet but who can argue with longer buff duration? You could also use an impresence amulet for despair which is a tad more expensive then a solstice vigil.
Pantheons
Lunaris for major It makes us faster and chonkier which is all we need, Arakaali is a good alternative I haven't tested enough. Abberanth for minor potentially not the best choice, you would want Ralakesh if you did not have immunity from bleeding and maybe even Tukohama if you spend a lot of time just Bodyswapping
Flasks
Probably one of the juicier bits as far as using instilling orbs goes, Using the cadiro keystone granted by the legion jewel we can restore our life and ES to max hitting this flask, having it activate on savage hit will make you deceptivly tanky as you rarely have to hit any flasks in this settup. Obligatory zoomer flask, That's it. it makes you fast, but you could have immunities on it if you needed. I'm realizing as I checked this flask the freeze immunity is redundant seeing as we use Arctic armour now, but again this flask is just for zooming. Gotta get onslaught somehow right? Bit of a multi purpose flask here, Rumis helps our Moltenshell feel worth using isntead of Steelskin. It also makes glancing blow better granted you could drop this flask, molten shell and the nodes up to glancing blows for other things. Chalice to ensure we can keep not pressing flasks and zoom, that's about it.
Jewels
A large portion of our damage comes from good cluster jewels, there are no good budget options here as it will just feel alot worse without. We get 3 pointers grabbing as much damage as we can. For our mediums we want brush with death as it makes the clear a million times smoother, the best secondary nodes would be wicked pall and flow of life. Outside of this try to get resists and attributes. For our small clusters we could also do normal jewels but here's what I'm using as example. Surging vitality will negate any degen caused by the forbdiden taste flask as well as Death aura. Sublime sensation or fettle would be the best alternatives for sheer effective HP. Slap this bad boi north of witch for that dmg multi, there is no better alternative. In a perfect world you would want doubble malevolence mods for chaos multi and bleed immunity, but this will do, for now. We get this one for Cadiro so that we can pretend we're playing hybrid, any ES is effective HP at the end of the day and having a flask restore HP and ES all in one go makes this pretty darn good, but you could opt for a glorious vanity instead with xibaqua/divine flesh. For our normal jewels we want life and chaos multi followed by other types of generic damage, attributes or resists. _________________________________________________________________________________ FAQ's Q; How do I get thru the acts without Death's Oath? A; ED/cont or Blight/Bane etc Q; Will this guide stay updated? A; No Q; Why aren't you using CA? A; Cease _________________________________________________________________________________ Old guide Tears of blood, aching heart, My dear Isildria must depart. [Keeper] Oath keepers - Friendly EU focused guild for experienced players More info @ thread ID; 1426886 IGN; Isildria Last edited by isildria on Aug 20, 2021, 11:02:27 PM Last bumped on Feb 6, 2022, 5:02:46 AM
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You are doing it wrong. You should pick up a rare item from the ground and use that like the game is supposed to be played.
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Very cool, looks strong and fun (if you like the fast play style)! Seriously makes me consider rerolling a 2nd character
Thanks for the share! |
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Poggies
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trying this, I was curious as why the PoB link is Ci and pure ES and the Skill Tree on regular link looks more realistic with life ?
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" Bit of an error on my part showing an older skilltree, it's been fixed now. Tears of blood, aching heart, My dear Isildria must depart. [Keeper] Oath keepers - Friendly EU focused guild for experienced players More info @ thread ID; 1426886 IGN; Isildria Last edited by isildria on Aug 20, 2021, 11:03:21 PM
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Oh cool! thanks! I'm running story A-Ok with contagion and ED, then I'm on maps now lvl 73,
I swapped to death's Oath at lvl 62 haha then it's a blast. I used shadow tree for chaos resist/ dot like a toxic rain build and I'm going to respec for my clusters later today. I've played Death's Oath by Magefist on youtube last season, it was poggers for heist and mapping!@_@. I also tried CA/ Death's Oath last leauge and found I prefer the staff version for myself Last edited by EvilSlayer420 on Aug 21, 2021, 11:36:26 AM
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Hi Isildria,
I see on poe.ninja you league started with CI in 3.15. Would you recommend doing the same thing in 3.16? Playing around in PoB, it seems beneficial until you get good cluster jewels and Divine Flesh, but I'd like to hear an expert opinion! Thanks, Lapin. |
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" Hi there, I'm planning on doing a life based version again from the get go, gonna be starting out toxic rain and maybe going into body swap later if its a failed venture. CI just seems too low dmg (no catarina staff or bow) in the current meta to keep up, it's plenty tanky but not plenty tanky enough to make up for the dmg not being great. You could do lvl 100 as CI I believe, it just would be more investment for less payoff unless you REALLY enjoy the playstyle which I did for a long time. One could argue going CI with bow but I haven't seem it be very successful so far. I wouldn't run divine flesh as it seems like a lot of investment for only a little bit of damage from mastery and situational mitigation where as cadiro gives effective HP. I still think divine flesh is worth trying and seeing how you like it but it won't be what I try out starting off. Nothing is truly set in stone and the build will change a lot in the first week of the league most likely, there is a lot more focus on auras this time around cause of masteries and aura changes. Best of luck with your DO build and if you find anything worth mentioning feel free to share it with me as the league progresses, if you have questions shoot me a whisper. Tears of blood, aching heart,
My dear Isildria must depart. [Keeper] Oath keepers - Friendly EU focused guild for experienced players More info @ thread ID; 1426886 IGN; Isildria | |
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Thanks a lot for your feedback. :)
I wasn't sure whether it made sense to league start with CI, and then transition to a life based build. But since I was already a bit worried about the recovery with CI, it's good to hear going life-based at league is not crazy! Also, I'm surprised you like Cadiro on a life-based build, but I'll look into it to see I like it more than Divine Flesh. By the way, quick follow-up question. I've haven't played DO/Blight yet, and I'm not a fan of CA, which is why I looked into your build! What do you think of Blight, isn't a bit clunky against bosses? Have you considered Bane or Soulrend? From what I gathered, I feel that: * Bane is nice with a long duration, but harder to scale with DO (curse aura vs non-curse aura, although they both benefit from chaos dot multi). * Soulrend is a good DPS burst easy to scale with DO, but has a very short duration and requires recasting constantly, which might end up being clunky as well. Good luck to your league start as well. I'll go Soulrend/Bane on my end, and transition to DO as soon as possible! |
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