[3.20] Bitterdream Unique-Only Hierophant

Hello, my first build I share. Not the first build I made however. This one I assembled after several leagues passed, and me being alternatingly active and inactive for a long time. Please bear in mind that this build follows these rules:

- Using only unique items.
- Each item's trade price is less than a divine orb, preferably less than a quarter of it.

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Background Story

I almost never made/theorized builds with rare items, mostly only piecing together cheap unique items (yes, cheap ones). This I've done from the time I was learning PoE, and haven't changed ever since, even after seeing million dps builds. I just don't see the fun in assembling all rare gears. I mean, I'd simply have to grind and craft/get the items with the correct mods, and get another piece with similar mods, and when I have like 5 of them I can both tank and deal millions of dps. Yeah, I don't see the fun of it. Maybe because personally I dislike hardcore grinding (like, grind grind grind), and how it looks so linear to me (like, stack the same mods together, the more the better).

However, with the restriction of only using unique items, and the limitation of my own currency production, it becomes more challenging for me to figure out builds. Like, which items are underpriced for its value, which items work well together, with what class do these items work. The very limited item pool makes piecing items together harder and more satisfying to me. It's pretty hard, cause by nature, unique items are less supposed to work together with each other, and are more supposed to define the character build. In other words, they mostly work similar to a keystone in the skill tree, and their stats (the numerical value) are of less importance (if not also worse than proper rare items). Hence unless it's with top tier unique items, don't expect insane numbers. This particular build is not insane, but at least can get a character to level 100 reliably (based on the progress so far).

On personal story, I used to think that builds also require 75% chaos resistance on top of 75% elemental resistances. And this thought alone made assembling builds with above-mentioned rules outrageously harder. Because most chaos resistance unique items come with their own limiting factor, if not being plain bad (like The Broken Crown, Zahndethus' Cassock). Therefore my builds were very hindered by me trying to achieve 75% chaos resistance. But after knowing that PoE is balanced around characters having 75% elemental resistance and 0% chaos resistance, I refined my previously best build and come up with this one.

At the moment of writing this, my character on this build has reached level 94 with only one problem left to reach level 100: time. My latest problem before this was burning ground damage on tier 16 maps which is something I feel on par with corrupted blood (which was already handled). I ended up switching my boots to Redblade Tramplers, that thankfully still fits with the build. My idea from this point is to just run maps while carefully avoiding potential one-shot hits. There are some, but not much and can be avoided easily just by playing properly (i.e. not lazily).

Interestingly, what I fear the most nowadays is actually opening strongboxes. For some reason, if it cast Ice Nova when it's opened, this ice nova can one-shot me if paired with getting some hits from the mob. Before this, I frequently got killed by those walking suicidal lightning guy things some monsters spawn, and sometimes got bursted by fire damages (maybe traps, some things I didn't dodge). And I fixed these by running Ruby Flask and Topaz Flask instead of sulphur and diamond. For the ice nova strongbox however, I don't see running Sapphire Flask helpful, as it's rather unnecessary for other purposes (since cold damage is generally lower than the other two) and I don't know with what trigger I'd automate it for this particular reason. And so I left it as it is, and just kept a reminder to runaway from strongboxes whenever I open them (or have a guard skill active).

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The Build

PoB code. (Uses average item value rolls, some items like the Polaric Devastation are bought cheaply mostly only with low-rolls)
Current Passive Tree. (Current equipped jewels are listed below)



I'll provide more details of the build as needed. For now, I can add that these slots are replaceable: Gloves, Boots, both Rings, Flasks.

You can't get Frozen Trails outside of Standard now.

Next league I'll try making another unique-only build. I only started to play the game again recently, around before new patch was announced.

PoB link die

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BlackLionXIII wrote:

PoB link die

Checked just now and it isn't.

On another matter, I'll be updating this again post crucible update. The update brings some buffs to the build actually, or generally speaking, to Hierophant.

At the moment I've upgraded the build to use Watcher's Eye jewel with reflected elemental damage taken reduction. And swapped the boots to Windscream, allowing +1 curse on vixen's trigger. The immunity to burning ground then comes from pantheon. I'm not updating main thread for this tho. I'll wait post crucible and test things again for it.

Any chance to get some gameplay footage?