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In the current Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion, the developers have added a league mechanism called Mercenaries of Trarthus, which allows players to obtain an ally that counts as 0.5 players through combat and hiring during the exploration process-a mercenary.

Mercenaries also have the same build system as regular players, which means you can choose to continue using their original items or skill gems, or discard them and equip them with your own build options. Once this league mechanism was launched, it has gained the love of many players.

But unfortunately, during this week, the hot fixes released by the developers in the 3.26 patch have been suppressing the cooperative effectiveness of Mercenaries, such as reducing the damage of the skills they use in encounters and reducing the damage reduction of high-level Mercenaries.

This makes many players very dissatisfied, because in addition to the new end-game storyline, the most interesting thing for players in this league is the league mechanism of Mercenary as an ally, which seems to be shooting itself in the foot. But this does not mean that you cannot rely on this mechanism to complete the exploration of this league.

This guide will introduce you to a Mercenary build that can be perfectly matched with all the current popular Lightning builds. It can not only release damage exponentially, but also has strong survivability. Of course, the item options used here and some precautions will also be taught.

Best Mercenary Build Overview 

Previously, Storming Zealot Mercenary was one of the best Mercenaries in the minds of players. This is one of the Infamous Mercenaries that you need to defeat in the current level 78 or higher area.

Compared with other mercenaries, the item Dying Breath it has allowed you to provide a buff similar to an aura: increase damage and curse effects to nearby enemies, which is universal in any combat scenario.

Even the aura level it can have is much higher than what you can get by spending a lot of POE Currency. But since the developers have been nerfing it recently, many players who focus on Lightning builds have been forced to turn to Kineticist Mercenary.

Because this mercenary can give you a very important bonus, Haste, which will give you a buff to the movement speed, attack speed and casting speed of your mercenary allies. Even for those who use non-Lightning builds, just place a ring that adds an additional curse to deal super elemental damage.

It is also worth mentioning that in the Mercenaries of Trarthus league mechanism, since you can’t increase your hired mercenaries by adding experience points or spending crafting materials, you should choose it after you encounter a higher level mercenary and equip it with the most useful item options.

Best Item Options

The first item to choose for Kineticist Mercenary is Doryani’s Prototype, a unique Saint’s Hauberk that focuses on letting you cast Lightning damage.

In addition, choosing two rings that make your lightning resistance negative will make your mercenary and yourself very deadly in terms of lightning damage. So how can you ensure survivability after having enough damage?

In fact, although the developers have made many changes to Mercenary, its survival probability is still very high, so here are just some extra layers to its properties and statistics so that it can pass the test of Tier 17 Maps smoothly.

The first property to pay attention to is the ability to regenerate life per second. Compared with regular armor, the armor used by the mercenary provides weaker defense, and because of the changes to damage reduction, it is more vulnerable to more damage, so increasing the life's regeneration ability will make it more sustainable.

You can choose Dawnbreaker Colossal Tower Shield for this purpose, which will convert up to 20% of your lightning damage into fire damage, which can give you an advantage when fighting some monsters with strong lightning resistance but low fire resistance. And the blocking and armor it provides are excellent.

Or you can choose Immortal Flesh, which provides huge health regeneration and reduces resistance. For the other item options in the build, you can choose whatever you want, but as long as it can increase the health regeneration rate of you or the mercenary during the battle and have a high additional damage buff.

Also Read: Can Path Of Exile 3.26 Regain Its Former Popularity During The Development Of The Sequel?

Things To Note

First, in order to make your mercenary have super high lightning damage, you have controlled its resistance to lightning damage to negative numbers in advance, which may make it face more threats of death when fighting monsters or boss encounters with you that only cast lightning damage.

So it is best to check the player community or social platform before the challenge to check the weaknesses of this enemy and the elemental damage type it focuses on, so that you can invest more POE Currency in the mercenary’s construction at the nearest checkpoint to temporarily enhance lightning resistance.

In addition, some explorable maps in the current POE 3.26 contain elemental reflect modules, which will also put your mercenary in danger of having more chances of death, so you should avoid entering them, even if it can provide you with super rich loot rewards.

The above is the best mercenary build you can currently make in Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion. Of course, the developers may make large-scale changes to the mercenary mechanism again this month or next month, and there may be better mercenary prototypes at that time. Let’s look forward to it together and wish you a happy game!

When delving into Path of Exile, which has been released for more than ten years, you may be overwhelmed by the huge passive skill tree, the diverse skill gems, the many variants of gear, and the complex Ascendancy route.

Moreover, when you seeking the best builds in the player community and social media, you may also be daunting by the hundreds of passive skills and interactions between active skills.

However, it is worth noting that there are still some builds in POE that achieve a single stack of damage with just one active skill activation, dealing extremely high damage to enemies and providing stackable defenses for yourself.

They are called one-button builds. So here is a guide that lists the best one-button builds in the current Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion and the things you need to pay attention to when making and using them. 

Since there is a greater emphasis on passive and skill gem synergy here, you may need to farm more POE currency through some profitable league mechanisms to enhance your gear and maximize the power of your build.

1. Flicker Strike Berserker/Slayer

The first build to be introduced is based on the most popular one-button skill Flicker Strike in the current league, applicable to all class play styles. However, the most suitable one is the passive skills that the two Ascendancy Classes Berserker and Slayer can provide you.

In this build system, you only need to hold down the normal attack button in combat, and then you will be automatically teleported to the side of each enemy and use powerful damage capabilities to easily kill them, which also works in endgame content.

It should be reminded here that since Flicker Strike has a long cooldown, you may need to choose gear around Frenzy Charges that can help you reduce the skill cooldown when making this build. Among them, Replica Farul’s Furr is one option you should pay attention to.

2. Cyclone Slayer

Thanks to the developer’s enhancement of Cyclone skill, the build with it as the main core has become the preference of many players in the game, and even its production method has been searched more times on the community and social platforms than other builds.

During the battle, you only need to cast high range damage by clicking Cyclone to gain the ability to clear the entire screen and move quickly. Coupled with the passive skill that Slayer provides you with increasing AOE damage, you can achieve efficient farming in some maps or mechanisms with super loot rewards.

Although this one-button build is less dependent on Uniques than the other ones, it consumes a lot of mana, so you really need to invest some POE Currency in it to improve mana recovery efficiency and reduces mana consumption.

3. Righteous Fire Chieftain

Both of the one-button builds we just introduced have some disadvantages to some extent, but if you choose Righteous Fire, you will be free from those difficulties. Because it has both high damage and certain tanking capabilities, you only need to activate this skill and shuttle back and forth on the map to complete the battle.

However, since Righteous Fire will cause some damage to itself during the casting process, you really need the passive skill of Chieftain, Marauder’s Ascendancy class that increases the health regeneration speed to achieve higher survivability.

Of course, in addition to the regular defense buffs, you also need to pay attention to the fire damage ability and sustained ability statistics of your skills, so please invest more time and energy in those gears that can provide you with these buffs to farm or directly craft.

4. Death’s Oath Occultist

If you don’t want to worry about whether your fire resistance is enough to cast the maximum effect of Righteous Fire every time, you can try to use Death’s Oath to cause unstoppable Chaos Damage to the enemy, even with a thick energy shield.

In the current POE 3.26, this unique chest piece has been enhanced: after activating Death Aura skill given to you, the basic damage to the enemy has been increased from 1000 to 1250. In this case, Occultist, which focuses on chaos damage, will be the best choice to carry this skill.

Most importantly, since Death Aura skill does not cause damage to you, you don’t need to stack too high health recovery ability in the construction, so that you can invest more in nodes that can provide you with higher DPS, but this will make you lack defensive ability against single monsters such as bosses, so please pay attention.

5. Essence Drain Contagion Trickster

The last one to be introduced is also an old acquaintance. Whether in POE 1 or POE 2, the skill combination of Essence Drain and Contagion has excellent effects and is loved by many. Although this cannot be strictly considered a one-button skill, it is also included because the chain damage ability they present is too strong.

You first need to cast Contagion, and then cast Essence Drain. This will cause the enemy affected by the previous skill to spread the unconsumed skill damage to other nearby enemies after death, which makes the chaos damage and continuous damage ability you need to invest in it stronger.

So Trickster came into being, but it is worth noting that it also has the common problem of one-button builds it will be very difficult when fighting against Boss, so please always pay attention to your defense ability.

These are the reasons why the 5 one-button builds in the current Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion are worth trying, as well as the specific production methods. Hopefully, with their help, you can easily complete the exploration of the main campaign, and after a little modification, it will still be valid in the endgame content. I wish you a happy game!

Path of Exile 3.26 adds a series of updates and changes, so the build rankings in this expansion will undergo earth-shaking changes again.

Among them, Flameblast of Celerity has been greatly enhanced in Secrets of the Atlas expansion, with an additional 220% increase in spell damage for each gem level. So, there is no doubt that this skill will lead the new build trend in this league.

Here, we will talk about Flameblast of Celerity Totem league starter built with this as the core. This can make a lot of monsters explode before your eyes.

Build Basics

First of all, for Flameblast of Celerity, if you haven’t obtained this Transfigured Gem, you can also choose to use the regular Flameblast. But this is naturally not as good as Transfigured version.

Since the regular Flameblast has a maximum of 10 stages, even if the casting time is reduced to 0.2 seconds, it still takes 2 seconds to reach the maximum level, which is quite slow.

In addition, Totem will automatically release the skill after reaching the maximum level. Although this ensures that the skill always has the maximum damage, the damage will be delayed, which not only leads to mediocre monster clearing speed, but also puts us in danger because we need to stay in the monster group longer than usual.

Therefore, we need to spend POE Currency to equip high block shields and focus on stacking block nodes. Currently, our attack and spell block chance is about 50%, but it is still not enough, because it is tied to our survivability, so I think it is worth investing more in it. Of course, positioning is also important, after all, this is a totem-based build.

Leveling Tips

For leveling, it is actually quite smooth, because we only need to drop totems and run through the monster group. Although the monster clearing speed is mediocre, the experience points obtained are not bad.

Before we got Flameblast Gem in Act 3, we used Holy Flame Totem, Rolling Magma, and Flame Wall when we upgraded. Since Spell Totem was available in Act 1, we prioritized upgrading this support gem, and then immediately switched to it as soon as we got Flameblast.

For those who want to use Flameblast of Celerity in Solo Self-Found mode but can’t stand Flameblast, you can use other fire spells such as Blazing Salvo, which you can use from Act 1 until you get Transfigured Gem.

Flameblast Of Celerity

So, when we started to advance Yellow map, we switched to Flameblast of Celerity. We can clearly feel the difference in casting time from the explosion. Compared with the normal flame blast, Flameblast of Celerity is obviously much faster, and the clearing speed is not very fast, but it is still good.

Flameblast of Celerity only has 3 stages at most, which means that even though its cast time was increased from 0.25 to 0.3 seconds in POE 3.26, it still takes less than 1 second to reach the maximum stage. If you can stack the cast speed of your gear and talent tree, you can further reduce the channel time.

So far, this build is very easy to play, as it does not require any special gear, and the only investment is the Transfigured Gem. Despite the poor gear, Flameblast of Celerity still does pretty good damage. Its single target attack is completely fine, even with regular Flameblast.

Gear

For this build, we have different gear choices for the early, mid, and endgame stages.

Early

Early versions of the gear are usually simpler. But let’s be honest, when we first reach the endgame, our gear will be very poor, so we have to prepare in advance. We want Flameblast to reach the maximum stack as soon as possible, so stacking cast speed is key, which can be obtained from weapons and jewelry.

As for shields, try to choose the one with the highest blocking chance, preferably more than 40%, and some life and resistance are additional bonuses.

If we can get and equip Tempest Shield in Act 2, plus the 2 clusters we will get later, unless we play too much, it should be safe to upgrade and map.

So, why not just use Glancing Blows? In my experience, unless you have other damage reduction mechanisms and life recovery is also high, it is easier to die with Glancing Blows. This is because when we have a high blocking chance, we will block frequently, and each block will take 65% damage. But if we block continuously and cannot recover life quickly, we will die easily.

As for Aura setup, vitality is the last consideration, which is only equipped when we upgrade to mid-term equipment.

In addition, Lightning Golem is useful when our casting speed is not fast enough, but if it dies frequently, you can completely give up it.

As for other equipment, just focus on satisfying your attributes and limiting your resistance. Chaos resistance is currently very hard to limit, but you should at least get it to a positive value.

Mid-game

Next, if you just want to make some money and switch to the next build, you should stop at the mid-game.

Here we need to get Eldritch Implicit Modifiers and some mana so that we can finally equip Vitality.

We can try to make some low-cost mods, such as increasing the block chance of body armor. These equipment will allow us to complete most of the endgame content, except for Tier 17 maps, Uber bosses and some high-difficulty Invitations.

Endgame

Finally, let’s take a look at the endgame! This is for those who really want to invest in completing the build. Remember, I don’t mean to get these equipment right away, you can upgrade them slowly.

There is an easy way to scale the damage of Flameblast of Celerity, which is to stack gem qualities. Now the gem of level 1 quality provides 2% extra spell damage per stage, which means 6% extra spell damage at the highest stage.

To improve the quality of gems, we can do so by equipping Dialla’s Malefaction, Ashes of the Stars, and Enhance Support. In addition, if a skill gem is placed in a green slot, the gem will receive a 30% quality increase.

However, here we choose to give up Ashes of the Stars and choose Leadership’s Price to increase defense. With Leadership’s Price, we can inflict Scorch, Brittle and Sap effects. Among them, Scorch reduces the elemental resistance of the enemy, Brittle increases the critical strike chance, and Sap reduces the damage caused by the enemy. Although we lose ignite damage, it is honestly negligible.

Since Flameblast of Celerity has no ailment damage mod, we only need to focus on strike damage. Conflux ensures that all strikes have a 100% chance to cause Scorch, Brittle and Sap.

However, whether Ailment is strong enough to apply its effects depends on skill damage and numerous non-damaging ailment effects, which means that it is very important to get Militant Faith with enhanced non-damaging ailment effects.

In addition to this, we can get a 50% increase in effect from Critical Mastery and 20% from the ailment effect node. Militant Faith can also enhance the passive Inner Conviction, which increases the spell damage of Power Charge by 3%. Since we have 5 permanent Power Charges, the spell damage is increased by 15%.

For support gems, Empower Support is actually more powerful than Increased Critical Damage Support, but obviously more expensive. If you are okay with clearing, then Concentrated Effect Support is also a good choice. Awakened Fire Penetration Support actually causes the least damage, but I think it is mandatory because we will not curse every monster when mapping, but it can be worry-free.

Finally, when we have enough maximum fire resistance and life regeneration, we want to use Righteous Fire to cause more spell damage. At the same time, we can also get life recovery through Vitality Aura, Ascendancy classes, Watcher’s Eye and equipment.

Whether you want to focus on mapping or leveling, this Flameblast of Celerity Totem build can help you achieve your goals as soon as possible in the early stages of the league. Try it now!

In the latest Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion, players can use the newly added game mechanics and new items to create a lot of builds with different play styles. But what won’t change is that you still need to put some flasks on it to enhance the balance between your own combat and defense capabilities.

Unlike regular action role-playing games, the role of flasks in POE is not only to help restore your health or mana, but also to provide you with some temporary buffs and ailment immunities. So, whether you are in the main campaign or in the endgame content, having a set of flasks in your build is crucial for your exploration.

Since we are currently in the early stages of the expansion update, most players are still fighting in the early game content, so this guide will bring you the types of flasks that can be used in the current game content and the tips and precautions needed during use.

How Does It Work?

For those new to Path of Exile, here is how flasks work in the game. This is a special consumable that gives you some recharge based on the number of monsters you kill, which are consumed when you use the flask.

It is worth reminding you that multiple effects of the same type of flask do not stack, so it is best to pick flasks that synergize with your build. For example, in a build with high spell damage, you will need to place as many flasks as possible that can quickly restore a large amount of mana to maintain a smooth battle.

Types

In the current POE game content, there are three types of flasks:

• Life Flasks: Allows you to restore a certain amount of health in a short period of time, but will stop recharging after reaching the maximum health.
• Mana Flasks: Like Life Flasks, they allow you to restore your mana over a certain period of time, and will stop recharging after reaching the maximum mana.
• Utility Flasks: They can provide you with some buffs for a certain period of time.

Selection Strategy

Although I just said that you should choose the corresponding flasks according to your build, there are some general strategies that can be provided to you. First, in the early exploration process, since you have less POE currency and not many flasks to choose from, you can place a Life Flask and two Mana Flasks in your build to achieve continuous basic operation.

As the campaign progresses, you need to choose better Life Flasks and Mana Flasks according to the development of your build, and choose the corresponding Utility Flasks according to your exploration needs to obtain some continuous buffs. Here are also some Utility Flasks worth paying attention to in the mid-to-late exploration of POE 3.26 and their specific uses.

• Quicksilver Flasks: Can increase your movement speed.
• Granite Flask: Can reduce the physical damage you suffer. And can be paired with Molten Shell to provide you with a higher shield buff.
• Jade Flask: Allows you to increase your dodge level so that you can more easily avoid enemy attacks.
• Quartz Flask: Can provide you with Phasing skills, which will allow you to easily pass through group enemy attacks.
• Ruby/Topaz/Sapphire Flask: Can increase your maximum elemental resistance, thereby increasing elemental damage reduction.

Also Read: What New Changes Does Path Of Exile 3.26 Secrets Of The Atlas Bring? - Endgame And New Mode

Usage Strategy

Not only do you need to spend some time choosing flasks, but there are also some things to pay attention to when using them. It is best to use Life Flasks when your health drops below 50%, so that some flasks can play the maximum recovery effect.

As for Mana Flask, although you can’t abuse it, you still need to have a sufficient inventory at all times to offset the mana consumption after you cast too many skills. For Utility Flasks, you need to invest as much POE Currency as possible in them to extend the duration of their buffs as much as possible.

However, if you don’t want to pay attention to both skill rotation and flask usage during combat, you can enchant Utility Flasks with 5 Instilling Orbs and 5 Glassblower’s Baubles, which will make the entire flask set execute automatically and improve your dodge ability and focus ability.

Modifiers

As one of the most important items in POE character builds, flasks also have the opportunity to add additional modifiers, which will improve their effects to a certain extent. Here you need to be reminded that you need to go to Menagerie to craft the target, which will be unlocked after you capture beasts for Einhar in Act 2.

Here, you can find Blood Altar, which requires you to sacrifice some beasts to craft the corresponding modifiers. Just like choosing flasks, you also need to add modifiers according to your builds requirements and exploration requirements.

For example, if the monster you face next focuses on casting bleeding damage, you can add a modifier with Sealing to your Life Flask or Mana Flask, which will make you immune to subsequent Bleed and Corrupted Blood when you are bleeding damage.

In addition, Utility Flasks also have suffixes. You can spend some Orbs of Alteration and Orbs of Augmentation to add some suffixes focusing on armor, dodge, movement speed, critical strike chance and elemental resistance to make your build more powerful.

That’s it for flasks in Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas expansion, along with some strategies for choosing and using them. Since the developers often release multiple patches to the game within a month of the expansion’s release, the properties and statistics of some flasks will change.

Hopefully, you can use them correctly and place the right flask sets in your builds to give yourself the best exploration experience and to complete the main campaign and endgame content faster. Have fun!