[Build of the Week] 0.3 | KD's Militia Man | Special Ops Take on Wraeclast | AP/HV Witch Hunter

For those that want to RP an Elite Soldier!

The Militia Man is ready to take on the Eldritch horrors and literal gods with nothing, but his trusty AK, sniper rifle, and a few grenades of choice. Using Armor Piercing Rounds and Riven Armor from High Velocity Rounds we can tear through Maps, and the End Game with style (and Visual Clarity).

This Build is Beginner Friendly with no complicated mechanics. Destroy End game on a budget with only a 1 exalt Unique (At the time of posting). Most importantly this build allows you to play the game with full visual clarity. This build is currently doing all content and has much more room to grow with heavy investment.

Mobalytics
https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/profile/97cdb4fd-9868-43ea-a85d-b91d7bb688fd/builds/9c3d6110-9788-4248-b951-95df869a209b


Youtube showcase - Watch Me first!!
https://youtu.be/VOcsVY0CC9Q

AP = Armour Piercing Rounds
HV = High Velocity Rounds

[Strategy]
This is a 1 button build, just hold down AP and keep moving most of the screen will be obliterated. When you come across a rare this becomes a 2 button build. The change to weapon swap making it instant meaning you can continue to hold down AP then tap left click to HV a rare and go right back to AP to get the most of Riven Armor, that is unless you miss your HV. So we use AK to mow down the hordes, then Snipe the Rares for added dmg, just like an elite soldier. When you get to bosses or Essence, somewhere you have to wait to dmg the enemy, you can front load dmg by dropping 2-3 Explosive grenades before they are damageable and have that go off right when they are damageable. Then we rinse and repeat strategy one till they are dead. To get a noticeable boost in dmg you can use Sniper's mark and Emergency reload before you Snipe (HV) the Boss to further boost Riven Armor (This is optional).

[Pros]
This build works best in tight areas to take advantage of Ricochet, but does just fine in open areas as well. This also means bosses take more dmg when there is a wall around. We move at full speed while attacking so we are rarely hit. Cull easily Kills high density content, So we excel in Delirium, Abyss, Ritual, and Expedition. We can do any Map mods.

[Cons]
The bane of this build is being surrounded, being stunned, Slows, and dmg over time. To mitigate these issues we use movement to not get surrounded, Stun happens semi regularly but as long as we keep moving and killing right after the stun we recover well. We get plenty of reduce Slow potency so slow is also well mitigated. This leaves DMG over time which bypasses Sorcery ward. I regularly use charms and Life flask to mitigate this successfully but there are also nodes to increase ailment threshold and to make us immune to poison.

[Offense]
Offensively We are leaning heavily into Culling strike and Decimating Strike. Decimating Strike "Removes" 5-35% of dmg at the first strike. Culling kills enemies at 30% (Normal), 20% (magic), 10% (Rare), and 5% (Unique). Myris Uxor gives us 100% increase and we can get another 40% from the Tree (80% for Rare and unique). We can further increase this number with Anoints as there is another 20% on the tree and you can have Gems with increase culling threshold gaining another possible 60-80 percent. Max we could have 160% (200% Unique and Rare) increase. We are looking at culling at 78% (Normal), 52% (magic), 30% (Rare), and 15% (Unique) (I could be wrong with the math don't sue me) this means in most cases we can kill Normal and Magic monsters in 2-5 hits regardless of how much dmg we are doing. So we use AP to attack quick with minimal down time with reload and we Use HV to deal high dmg and increase AP dmg with Riven Armor against enemies that need more dmg done against them.

[Defense]
Defensively We use Avoidance as our main defense by moving as we attack, Blind is secondary to increase avoidance then we have a decent bit of armor to mitigate when we do get hit. Sorcery Ward does a lot of heavy lifting here and with how often we get hit 6k+ ward and full resistances most elemental dmg can be ignored. We heal 2% life and mana on killing an enemy (from the tree) so during mapping as long as you are killing recovery and mana are not an issue. If 2% is not enough you can Add Cannibalism II to add another 2% to get 4% but for me 2 % has been enough. Life Drain I thought would be perfect for this build as we cull everything but it may be bugged or just doesn't work as it works when the "Supported Skill" culls and technically our Cull comes from the ascendency, not a Skill so it doesn't seem to register. I don't know if that is intended behavior, but we have full support gems anyways. We use both Wind dancer and Scavenged Plating to increase Evasion rating and armor. Wind dancer is also used to prevent being surrounded or give you a moment to get away if you get a bad stun.

[Personal Experience]
My gear is not the best so I have about 50% of both evasion and physical mitigation but this along with Sorcery ward has been enough to allow me to do T16+ content. As we have a lot of avoidance I have played with the idea of using Iron reflexes to change all Evasion into armor to further boost mitigation and add the Armor takes elemental dmg as well. This would make a good difference in our defenses but again my gear is not that great. Energy shield/ward has been troublesome at times as this has to be removed before we can cull so enemies that should have died in 2 shots now take a bit longer. This is enough time for you to possibly get surrounded but have good map awareness and it will be fine as we move fast enough to kite most enemies and Wind dancer will Knock back any that hit you so it would take a lot for you to be surrounded.

Any thoughts on how to make this build better are appreciated.