[3.23 SC] Auto Vengeance Inquisitor using Overloaded Tincture | 70 Million DPS | Tanky

Hello! This is the first build I am proud enough of to post here! It uses a bunch of new mechanics to boost an unusual and unorthodox skill, vengeance, to the moon.

It boasts impressive tankiness, screenwide clearing, and can dish out average hits of around 40 million to Pinnacle bosses!
Give the videos a look to see what I mean!

80% Quant Feared - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Au1Scntip0
Uber Sirus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy84nAnuUTI
Uber Exarch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykSkITU0S0Y
Wave 30 Simulacrum - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVyNDU6sd_c
Minotaur Map - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJXYYsCUr34
6k Wisp Semi Juiced Map - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YweU0E70sk

https://pobb.in/i2IFT80_d8YP - 15/1/2024 Initial concept
https://pobb.in/QiUK5jY7m-tR - 25/1/2024 Dropped Fanaticism for a more well rounded setup. Gained sockets used for Vaal Haste for burst cast speed. Got Onslaught on the Body Armour. Full PoB warrior is 120mil dps +, normally 75mil+

There's also an experimental budget/starter pob in the FAQ for the adventurous

The main build-around item for this character is the new tincture added in Affliction.
This item gives us %increased attack damage for every non-instant spell we've cast recently, similar to inquisitor's Instruments of Virtue ascendancy. The only difference is that this mod..

HAS NO CAP

That's right, if we cast a 100 spells in an 8s interval we will get 1800% increased attack damage, couple this increasing our tincture effect by 300% we'd have up to 7200% increased damage! This is a truly absurd number.

We also gain +2.4 metres melee strike from this tincture, which allows our Vengeance procs to almost hit the entire screen. (We get to around ~5m range overall, a true melee skill)

Now that we have a lot of %increased damage, the best way to scale this would be with a lot of added flat and critical damage. For this I chose strength stacking.




The reason for strength stacking:
- We don't get a lot of value from the skill tree, since %damage is a dead stat due to our insane 7000% increased from our tincture
- Corrupted magic jewels with adorned is really powerful this league
- Our lack of base passive tree nodes allows us to juice a LOT of value from the adorned with cluster jewels

In addition, because we're playing Inquisitor we can easily cap our critical strike chance by moderately scaling Intelligence. We also make our intelligence cap out our accuracy rating with the one mastery we take.

Now for the COOL TECH

We generate and utilize all the difference charges with the help of the new That Which Was Taken jewel. We chose one that gives us the "increased charge duration" as well as the "x% chance to gain an endurance charge when hit" stats.

We constantly hit ourselves (ouch) for instances of 1 damage (not so ouch) with Scold's Bridle to both proc our Vengeance skill and to give us endurance charges.

The Eldritch mod that can appear on body armours "Gain a frenzy charge every # seconds" pairs really well with our 100% increased charge duration to give us infinitely sustaining frenzy charges with minimal investment.


In the newer version, we now use the mod from "Essence of Insanity" instead of flat strength for Permanent Onslaught! That's cool!

Here is what sold me on the build and got me through the 38 challenge grind.

The main way we get a lot of general tankiness is through having a healthy amount of.. health. Strength stacking gives us a good base amount of life, and our prefixes on gear are relatively loose so we can get some more flat life there. Then we just get a few adorned jewels with %maximum life and we're set.

We get fortification from an eldritch mod on our body armour. This is good enough and uptimes our 20 stacks for most scenarios, but it is possible to instead spend 5 passive points to get guaranteed fortify on hit.

For some elemental damage reduction I use the pantheon to take 6% reduced damage if I've been hit recently, which is always thanks to Scold's.

And now to explain our physical resistances. We stack additional physical damage reduction (PDR) wherever we can.

-Shield: 6% PDR
-Body Armour: 8% PDR
-6 Endurance charges: 24% PDR
-Pantheons: 9% PDR + 4% PDR (average)
-Strength of Blood (Timeless Keystone): 12% PDR

Bringing us to a good ~63% additional physical damage reduction. Alongside having some armour bases for our gear we can get to 90% PDR for most scenarios and for bigger hits the additional gives us a healthy amount of reduction always. The PDR also protects us from some degens like bleeding, which is much appreciated.

We also don't take much extra damage from critical hits, the mod on our shield and on the Critical mastery makes us take 87% reduced extra damage from crits, which is very helpful against the empowered mobs.

We use Arctic Armour as a defensive aura, this further reduces the physical damage we take from hits by 21%.

NOTE: We are always stationary while casting, contrary to popular belief we do not use our legs to move around, but the new Frostblink of Wintery Blast which keeps us stationary.

If we don't get one-shot, we cannot die. This is thanks to the very popular unique amulet we got in Ancestor League.

We use this with petrified blood and enough recoup on our rings to offset its delayed damage degen.

Example:
For the example we are assumed to have 7000 life and PB prevents recovering more than 50%. Meaning our current life is 3500.

We will now tempt fate by opening an unidentified rare strongbox. It has "Detonate nearby corpses" and we don't read it in time, 100 corpses explode at our feet, each dealing 18000 raw damage.

Defiance recovers 42% of our missing unreserved life, but Petrified blood prevents this since we're at 50% already.
Our resistances kick in, reducing the damage by 75% from 18000 -> 4500.
Petrified blood prevents another bringing us from 4500 -> 2700.
Our current health drops to 800.

Now the second Detonate Dead explosion comes in.
Again, Defiance recovers 42% of our missing unreserved life (2600~) bringing us to 3400 life. We get hit again and go down to 700 life.

When Defiance procs again it will heal even more, since we're missing more life.

Every time we get hit we will recover a large chunk of our life the instant before getting hit. This amount will cap at 42% of our max life. In the example we would eventually be restoring ~2900 damage before we are hit, effectively making us IMMUNE the rest of the Detonate Dead explosions.

Another good comparison for Defiance of Destiny is Ward + Olroth's Resolve on a wardlooper, I'll spare the derivations but the equivalent amount of ward we'd have would be ~4900 and ~1600 life. This is insane considering wardloopers are happy with 1400 ward only! And they also aren't allowed to get any PDR or chaos res.

For ground degens like burning ground we have some health regen ~900 from consecrated ground and %regen on the tree, but it is typically best not to stand in fire for too long. If you are struggling with degens you can take the "Brink of Death" wheel that's on our pathing for an additional 400 health regen.

Hold down Frostblink for maps, it will give you ~a third of the full dps ramp which is more than enough for mapping. If something lives summon a totem, cast despair, and hold down unearth.

For bossing you ramp for the first 6s~, then Frostblink on top of the boss. You cast despair and summon your totem. Hold down unearth while vengeance auto-procs. Recast despair whenever your totems die/expire (about once every 10s) to keep Balance of Terror active. You are allowed to dodge big attacks with Frostblink if you have no balls

I wouldn't recommend levelling with this build, at least not until you get access to the tincture and effect per empty flask slot. Replica Alberon's Warpath should also be equipped before you swap.

For running through lab you should disable petrified blood and use vitality instead. You should also primarily damage enemies with totems instead of vengeance as your defensive layers aren't set up yet.

Initially I used a Timeless jewel with Balbala and a singular diamond flask with a duration mod and reused at end of effect. The suffix can be resistances if you need it, or cast speed for more damage.

You get a lot of free damage, so mapping isn't too hard. An longer range early alternative to vengeance for mapping/bossing is using the unique helmet "Wilma's Requital" with Ancestral totems in your 6 link. You can also spec "Tribal Fury" and "Panopticon" on the tree and the "Sleepless Sentries" node on a medium totem cluster jewel for free melee splash, and damage.

All the jewels and clusters were alt-spammed, good luck.

For the rest, you can cut costs on almost everything.

Reservation Corruption Scolds: use a lower level precision and use accuracy/str split personalities. You can also put precision on your life.

Paradoxia: use a chaos pen + dex/accuracy one instead.

Stygian Vise: alt or rage essence spam a hunter or elder belt for %attributes. craft on 12% CDR and use CDR corrupted magic abyss jewels (up to 3%) in your tree until you hit 22% total CDR.

Shield: reforge crit on a PURE STRENGTH BASE until you are satisfied. You are guaranteed to get reduced damage from critical strikes.

Adorned: use a lower roll one, one that can fit in your budget

Body Armour: you can use a Covenant for maximum damage (vengeance has no cost, so the life cost doesn't bother you) or you can just use any strength / hybrid 6link and spam rage essences till satisfied and craft the %attributes and eldritch mods.

Gloves: lower chaos fracture (~25%) and use 1 essence of insanity. Can 50/50 annul to craft on attributes. The "Chaos damage leeched as life" implicit is important

Rings: buy ilvl 82+ amethyst rings from trade with fractured 10%+ recoup, higher recoup is better. Reforge caster or zeal essence until you get a good 3rd suffix (str/chaos res). Craft on Life and Mana regen. Recoup effectively lowers the degen from petrified blood, early on you can cover the rest up with regen and leech.

General resistances and Crit: instead of the strength timeless jewel, you can use a Balbala maximizing for %attack and cast speed. You can then use a diamond flask with a duration mod and elemental resistances as a suffix. Alt spamming till you get this. You can also use a large cluster with Veteran Defender instead of a Voices.

Defiance of Destiny: just get one with alright resistances and 30%+ life recovered when hit.

Balance of Terror: This is 50% more damage, there is no real replacement for this item other than accepting the DPS loss. You can support your totems with withering touch, multiple totems, and multistrike, but this is typically not worthwhile.

1. Buy a ilvl 82+ helical ring (81 is technically fine, but you still want the option of reselling if you hit T1 Int/Dex/Etc)

2. Essence of Rage until you hit T2+ recoup (~54 tries)

3. Annul off all the other mods, (~1/6)

4. Suffixes can't be changed AUGMENT chaos for T3+ chaos resistance (1/2)

5. Suffixes can't be changed AUGMENT caster for T2+ cast speed (2/3)

6. Craft on life + mana regen, the regen is important since your cast speed is so insane

7. Cry

If you fail the augments you try to annul off the mod you just added, it's around 10.5d per augment attempt with current harvest prices

Body Armour
1. Buy a fractured 8% PDR body armour
2. Deafening Essence of Rage (Newest PoB uses Essence of Insanity)
3. If Suffixes aren't filled, use a Farric Lynx Alpha to Prefix -> Suffix
4. If you Suffixes are filled, you can use a Wild Bristle Matron to guarantee the Suffixes Cannot be Changed metamod for a lower price.
5. Veiled chaos, if prefixes are filled you can Eldritch Annul to try remove one of the prefixes.
6. Block "Chance to Block Spell Damage" and unveil %life/%mana (70% odds)
7. Eldritch Annul off the suffix that isn't strength and craft on %Attributes (50%)

Alternatively you can use Essence of Insanity for permanent onslaught, your hits will be smaller but your mapping and general experience will feel smoother with 20% increased cast speed.

Shield
1. Buy a pure strength ilvl 86+ shield base with the %strength implicit
2. Deafening Essence of Rage until either T1 PDR or T1 Reduced Extra Damage from Crits (REDFC).
3. If suffixes are filled annul off the other mod
4a. IF YOU GOT PDR: Suffixes cannot be changed -> Reforge Crit. You are aiming for T1 Reduced Extra Damage from Crits (1 in 4)
4b. IF YOU GOT REDFC: -> Suffixes cannot be changed -> Reforge Physical. You are hoping for T2+ PDR (2 in 9).
5. Repeat above until you have your suffixes complete. (T1 Str, T2+ PDR, T1 REDFC)
6. Wild Bristle Matron for Suffixes cannot be changed -> reforge life and hope for the best.

Belt
1. Crusader slam a ilvl 84+ 20% attribute quality Stygian Vise (you can quality the normal base to 20% for 4 intrinsic catalysts). Alt spam until T1 CDR and no other mods
2. Buy or make any hunter influenced belt with T1 %attributes and no other influenced mods
3. Awakener's orb the hunter belt into the Stygian vise. You are hoping for either a high T2+ strength roll as the last suffix, or ideally an open suffix to craft on. If you got T2 strength craft on life and call it a day, else try annul of the 3rd suffix -> multimod + suffixes can't be changed -> reforge life. You are hoping for any decent life or %life roll, and then you craft on hybrid attributes.

What is the budget for this build?
I started the build on a 20d budget (got lucky crafting my own adorned), but I've personally invested more than 180d and 20000 alterations at this point. A lot of the investment is making defiance of destiny work. Here's a really budget version that I think should be fine to map early on and get you going https://pobb.in/sy7_W5hPmqwx

Why do you use Unearth?
It is the spell in the game with the lowest cast point, 0.3s base. It also hits enemies so I can inflict wither really quickly. Don't level the gem up past level 1.

I have mana issues how come?
You should have the life and mana regen craft on both your rings, and the life mastery for 30% of mana costs as life. Also make sure Frostblink and Unearth are level 1.

Why do you not use spell echo? You can get so many more casts if you do.
Unfortunately the spell echo repeats don't count, so it reduces your dps.

I can't find your That Which Was Taken Jewel on trade, any suggestions?
You can grab endurance charge when you are hit for 3 passive skill points "Inexorable". You can take it instead of a crit wheel and use the reduced crit damage mastery here instead too if you want. This is a trade link set up for alternatives to my TWWT: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Affliction/3oXn9pJC5

Why do you use no flasks?
This is due to the wildwood ascendancy passive that gives me 75% increased effect of my tincture per empty flask slot. It would probably be optimal to use 1 flask, but going balls to the wall for 300% effect is what I preferred.