[Build of the Week][0.3] The Mafia Boss - a Doedre's Undoing Blood Mage with two henchmen.
|
Here's the T4 Xesht showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zw8lZGGXwY.
Here's the pobb.in: https://pobb.in/DzTM29TLLE-r  I have, since the advent of curses in PoE1, always loved the idea of a character entirely based on curses for damage. We weren't quite there yet on PoE2, until 0.3. We can finally entirely rely on casting massive curse AoEs for both clear and single target, and we get two undying, intimidating, leg-breaking henchmen to go with it! So what the hell is this build? The Mafia Boss (called that because of your two immortal henchmen that go around breaking legs and intimidating monsters as you curse at them and collect their loot) is a curse-based build that uses the new support Doedre's Undoing to deal a huge amount of damage on each cast of Despair, alongside a network of interactions involving almost every element of the 0.3 patch (five lineage supports, new uniques, new keystones...) You will like it if you: - Enjoy popping entire packs with a massive AoE curse (the CRACK is satisfying). - Enjoy facetanking almost any hit in the game, backed up by massive regen. - Enjoy obscure interactions, off-meta nonsense, and convoluted combos. - You're a hipster and enjoy having a 1ex unique weapon be your BiS You will dislike it if: - You need fast walk speed (the build uses unique boots so movespeed is somewhat low). - You dislike pressing buttons. - You dislike trial and error and going through several stages on the way to final build state. In terms of gear, I've optimized it a bit so I have a couple expensive-ish pieces (the 7div astramentis and the timeless jewel, mostly) but both of these can be easily done away with (though if you can't afford the jewel you will definitely need to allocate Spell Leech instead of, or in addition to, Tides of Blood). Everything else on the build is cheap, especially the weapon. How does it work? The core of the build is this beauty:  Doedre's Undoing turns your curses into a Hazard that pops as soon as an enemy steps on it (or more relevantly here, when you cast it on top of a monster). This is a much, much stronger take on the Impending Doom archetype as it scales based on 200% int. It's particularly great on Blood Mage as the base crit of the Doedre pop is 0%, so the 15% extra on Blood Mage is very relevant. From that base, the entirety of the build is a collection of unique tech that comes together into a cohesive package. So in no particular order, I'm going to share the bits of tech that makes it work: Tech 1 - Life cost and recovery: the Tecrod package
Spoiler
The build uses The Unborn Lich (1ex unique) as its weapon, with a very particular set of mods. It's BIS because of the unique scaling of the Doedre's pops, since we don't care about spell level and The Burden of Shadows can't help us either as the pop has no cost. The only potentially better combination would be Rathpith with a good wand, but it would require a significant rethinking of the tree to achieve 100% cost conversion.
 On the staff itself, 150-200% chaos damage + ~15% chance to pop enemies for 33% chaos gives us a lite version of Lich pops for clear. ~8% spell damage per 100 mana gives us another 250% spell damage. But the most important line is the one about converting spell mana costs to life. Alongside the tree, we achieve 100% conversion which allows us to pick three critical keystones: - Sacrifice of Blood (from undying hate) which allows us to regenerate massive amounts of life after spending any life. This is boosted by Arcane Surge turned to life regen. - Mind over Matter, and since we have no mana costs, mana functions entirely as EHP. - Eldritch Battery so we convert all ES into mana, entirely bypassing the downside of 50% more mana costs as we don't spend mana at all. While our curses have an insane ~1000 life cost, it doesn't matter, because our Tides of Blood BM node combined with an instant life flask makes us able to counteract the cost in the first few seconds, after which Sacrifice of Blood takes over and regenerates our life way faster than we can spend it, at which point Tides of Blood becomes a comfy 50% more Physical damage bonus that is always active. This tech allows us to entirely ignore skill costs and bolster our EHP by making our life become a last resort barrier if the mana pool gets breached. Until we have the timeless jewel, we can substitute this tech with simply the spell leech Blood Mage node in place of Tides of Blood. Tech 2 - Esh + mana remnants. My life is mana, my mana is life
Spoiler
Socketing Esh's Radiance on Despair + Doedre's allows our curse chaos damage to apply shock, which wouldn't be a huge deal by itself (though the extra damage is nice), but becomes a much bigger deal thanks to the interaction with Mana Remnants. MR is constantly generating blue spheres that overflow our mana pool to ~5000, and maintaining that overflow level is easy since we don't ever spend mana. Given that we have Mind over Matter, this gives unbelievable sustain while clearing, and a good help against bosses too since we consistently crit them.
This build messes with your instincts a bit as your life and mana are reversed from their usual roles: a big dip in mana means you're in trouble, where a big dip in life just means you're spending a big cost and the engine is running. Once you get used to it though, it's smooth sailing! Tech 3 - The Henchmen
Spoiler
This is where the build gets into silly territory. Meet Steve and Brandon, the two immortal henchmen.  We use two copies of Skeletal Brute in this build with the Brutus Brain support. Even if they did nothing more, I would still appreciate them because they're extremely good at distracting enemies and keeping aggro, but their usefulness doesn't stop there. No, they really do earn their 96 total spirit cost! Here's what they can do: - Their warcry command applies intimidate to enemies, plus gives us Unholy Might through the Kurgal's Leash support. - They maim on hit, which slows mobile bosses even further. - Most importantly, they can sacrificed at once by Soul Offering to grant us a 120% spell damage bonus and, very specially, the Kulemak's Dominion support effect (our spells are replicated on each offering spot). This basically more than doubles our DPS! You can see it at the end on the Xesht fight, where I quickly sacrifice both henchmen after their Command to triple my spell casts. Since the offering is cast from the swap, we use the Utmost Offering node to ensure they live for long enough to cause great damage. You may think the henchmen are a bit much at 96 spirit cost, and that the build would do better with CoC or similar, but believe me, I've tried. The amount of control they give you while clearing, plus the crazy 100% more damage burst when you decide to Offer them is more than worth it. Tech 4 - Temporal Chains interactions: slowed, maimed, frozen, hindered...
Spoiler
We use the swap to cast Temporal Chains, with a few extra perks. The swap tree invests even harder in curse and slow effectiveness to ensure TC is as strong as it can possibly be, and it is linked with Chaotic Freeze and Decaying Hex to make it so our despair pops apply freeze. Alongside the duration effect on TC, it makes it possible to maintain freeze for very long spans on time even on bosses. While clearing, we generally clear fast enough not to even need TC, but in case we feel overwhelmed we can pop one proliferating TC to keep everything under control.
There are multiple other minor interactions and tricks that the build can pull, such as using Feast of Flesh to supplement recovery, or establishing area control with the Offering when fighting a Ritual... There's a lot of joy in discovering what the build can do. Give it a try! Gearing tips
Spoiler
There are only two "Mandatory" pieces for the build, and a third one one that has alternatives if you can't afford it yet. To build the mafia boss, you'll want: - A Unborn Lich with these mods: - Windscream boots for your curses to pop instantly. - An Undying Hate of Tecrod. If you can't afford it, you'll have to allocate spell leech instead of Tides of Blood. After you have these three covered, your priorities are: - Maximizing resistances - High INT - High ES (especially in the chest piece) - Life Luxury items for future progression: - Astramentis - Rathpith Globe + wand with life conversion if you want to experiment and take the build to the fullest (I can't afford this). Please feel free to ask any questions. I can vouch for the build being extremely fun and smooth to play, and full of little quirks and aspects to learn and optimize. Last edited by Falcord#4858 on Sep 11, 2025, 7:51:38 AM Last bumped on Sep 11, 2025, 12:44:48 PM
|
|
|
I've been made aware by a player that one of the interactions in the build (considered casting on the main skill) doesn't work, so I've found a pretty awesome replacement:
Now that support is replaced with "Blindside", and the "Maim" support on the henchmen replaced with "Blind II". This is not a huge help when clearing, but clearing is entirely painless so it's not a problem. It does result in a huge DPS increase for bosses though! |
|
