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I'll guide you through the process of crafting a Golembrand Witch - a remarkably adaptable and straightforward minion build in Path of Exile 3.23. With no prerequisite gear necessary, it serves as an excellent choice for a league starter or as a foundational build for those eager to experiment with the latest transfigured spell gems.
Stock up on plenty of POE Currency to successfully finish this captivating build.
You’ll have 4 Golems. However, they’re just buff bots and get automatically resummoned if they die. That’s what I meant earlier when I said it was a minion build. Originally, I was going to use Storm Brand of Indecision. If you do choose to use that, just know that your damage will struggle to push deep into the endgame. Instead, you can swap over to Penance Brand, particularly the new Penance Brand of Dissipation, and immediately steamroll Elder Slayers and Pinnacle bosses. In fact, you could even make a fire or a cold variant of this build, but this guide is only going to focus on the primary lightning version.
The key to your damage is having a gigantically overpowered lightning exposure and applying it easily on every single cast with Wave of Conviction. Not only do you get the inherent exposure from Wave of Conviction, but your ascendancy Mastermind of Discord will further lower enemy resistances by another 25%.
You can head to the Wildwood and pick up Charms that will push another 7% per Charm. As you’re also using lightning skills, you can toss down an Orb of Storms with Hextouch to apply conductivity without ever having to cast it yourself. Basically, nothing will ever be able to resist your lightning damage with this build.
Defensively, this build has far more toughness and sustain than it has any business having. You will have immediate mediocre armor total, but the massively added physical damage reduction from your Chaos Golem buff will make you a very tanky caster.
Then we will discuss POE Items. You’re going to be wearing Templar armor with a caster shield and either using Wand or Scepter. You’re still going to want to find all the traditional caster stats like increased spell gem level, added lightning damage, and increased damage. However, the main stat that you’re going to want to chase is increased cast speed. Your brands are your primary source of damage, and you want them firing as often as possible.
If you’re using Penance Brand of Dissipation, this actually brings up a very weird conflict with the Swiftbrand Support. If you were using Storm Brand or Armageddon Brand, Swiftbrand is an automatic include because it simply equates to more damage at the cost of needing to recast the brand more often. Penance Brand of Dissipation is different, because of the innate energy mechanic.
The vast majority of your Penance Brand damage is going to come from pulses at 20 energy. Swiftbrand will get you to 20 energy faster, but it has a disproportionately harsher penalty on the duration of your brand. Your damage ramps up much faster, but you get proportionally fewer activations at 20 energy.
The key to understanding Swiftbrand with Penance Brand of Dissipation is knowing your damage uptime. If you are in any situation where you can just sit mostly still and cast your rotation, then Swiftbrand is a great choice and it will significantly increase your damage. On the other hand, if you’re doing something like a long boss fight that requires a lot of movement, then it’s best to drop Swiftbrand because you’re not going to maintain the necessary uptime to make it worth using.
Besides Swift brand, which you will want to use, you will also use the physical to Lightning, faster casting, lightning penetration, and Spellblade Support on Wave of Conviction. You’re going to use physical to Lightning, Arcane Surge, and Innervate on Orb of Storms. You’ll use Hextouch and Conductivity. You also have an optional fourth link here that honestly doesn’t really matter. You could put something like a minion support on your Golem or something on Orb of Storms, or leave it empty. It honestly doesn’t make much of a difference, so I just use increased AOE on there.
You also get to aura stack, though you won’t get to add in your final aura until you’ve gotten an Enlightened gem. You’ll use Clarity, Zealotry, Determination, and Herald of Thunder. The reason that you’re using Zealotry instead of Wrath is because the added crit helps smooth out Elemental Overload, and the consecrated ground is just great to passively generate.
If you want to play a Golembrand Witch, all you really need to do is just make a Witch and start playing. Early on, you can use pretty much whatever Lightning spell you want, whether it’s Lightning Tendrils or Spark. Whatever you’re going to want to get, Orb of Storms after you finish the Breaking Some Eggs quest. Once you hit the Cavern of Wrath, swap out your original Lightning spell so that you have Arc, Storm Brand, and Orb of Storms.
But one thing that’s a little unfortunate in this build is that you don’t get Wave of Conviction until Act 2, Penance Brand until Act 3, or your Golems until Act 4. Early on, this build feels like a very generic and honestly pretty mediocre caster. But then, it just turns on right as you head into Act 5. Because of that, you do kind of want to focus on your damage early, because your damage can be quite mediocre.
To level up your passive tree, take the left-hand path out of the witch starting area and then cut in to take Arcanist’s Dominion. Go up to take Lightning Walker, then head across to the left and down to the Templar area to take Discipline and Training, Holy Dominion, and Light of Divinity. Cut over to take the Runebinder keystone, as well as the Runesmith cluster. Take Quick Recovery, Heart and Soul, and Practical Application. Before you develop upward, you’re going to want to go all the way to take Commander.
As soon as you get those Golem skill gems at the end of Act 4, you want to summon 3 Golems right away. Once you have that Golem Commander, then you’re going to want to develop the left-hand side and go up to take Spiritual Aid. Then cut in on this side to take Elemental Overload. Once you have Spiritual Aid, Elemental Overload, and your Golems, now is the time to focus on your defense. You can take Faith in Steel, Sanctum of Thought, and then cut down to take Combat Stamina and the less crit damage taken Mastery. Then cut in to take Constitution and Iron Will.
Now, you’re going to want to get your auras going. Develop up and take the Sovereignty cluster. Then develop and take Deep Thought. But more importantly, take the Mastery, which gives you 12% increased mana reservation efficiency.
The build is fully set up, so you can choose to simply fill in the rest of the build as you’d want.
For your ascendancies, you’re going to want to take Liege of the Primordial first to get that third Golem. Then, Elements are second so that you can summon all 4. Whether you take Bastion of Elements or Mastermind of Discord for the third is actually up to you. The choice is just whether you want defense or offense first.
For the Wildwood, you’re going to want to head in and follow blue wisps to get to the Primal Huntress so that you can use Charms. I haven’t had enough experience using all the different charm effects to fully test this, but I regret focusing on the increased effect of golem buff Charms.
You’re going to want to get at least one charm that has Power Charge on critical. But then you’re also going to want to push and find Charms that further empower your exposure. This is the stat that I should have been seeking out when I started finding charm arms. Also, note that these Charm effects stack with your ascendancy Mastermind of Discord.
The beauty of this build is just how much borrowed power level you get from having those 4 Golems active. You get a giant boatload of free stats, and because of that, you just dive right into the endgame.
For anyone looking to test out the new transfigured brands or other transfigured spell gems, anyone who’s starting Affliction League late, or anyone who’s just looking for a nice comfy easy build with zero required pre-farm, this Golem brand Witch is perfect for you.
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View MoreAccording to the information released by the developers, Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas is expected to be officially released on June 13th. It adds a lot of new content, such as the current exclusive Mercenaries of Trarthus challenge league and new endgame content. In addition to the new mechanisms and items that will affect the gameplay, players are very surprised by the addition of the pause system.
In POE 2, which is highly sought after by developers, the pause mechanism has allowed some players to enjoy an unprecedented and enjoyable exploration experience. Given the previous developers’ attitudes towards the previous game and the sequel, players did not have high hopes for this Secrets of the Atlas league, but the appearance of the pause system overturned everyone’s views.
Since the current developers’ description of the pause mechanism that players are looking forward to is only a small part in the patch notes, most of it appears in some public interviews with its game director Mark Roberts. Therefore, this guide will explore the operation mechanism of the pause mechanism and the dual attitudes of developers and players towards it.
For a long time, it is not uncommon for players to die because of problems with the game instance or network architecture in Path of Exile as a massively multiplayer online role-playing game .
In fact, in this type of game world, as long as you do not choose the Hardcore mode, it is very normal to die 1-2 times during an exploration. However, the super-strict death penalty in POE will greatly increase the exploration cost of players, whether you die due to skill rotation or network disconnection.
First, all POE currency and loot that you have not collected in the exploration of this map will be confiscated. Secondly, you cannot explore it again by using the same Waystones (even those with the same modifiers).
This will make the player’s small mistakes in a certain battle infinitely magnified, and even cause some newly joined exiles to not dare to try the final boss in the first act, because they are afraid that they will not be able to beat it and make all the costs invested before go down the drain.
Not only that, those players with medium game skills will also use the build that conforms to the current game version for a long time, because they are afraid that the new build will cause them to die in battle, which is completely detrimental to the build diversity advocated by the entire game.
In view of this, the developers added the pause mechanism in POE 2 to change the status quo. In the subsequent exploration process, you only need to press Esc to pause, whether you are in some regular combat or running exploration.
But it is worth reminding you here that if you are playing a multiplayer game, only if each player chooses to pause can the entire exploration time be frozen here. According to Roberts, this is to prevent a player’s pause from affecting other players’ sessions to ensure fair exploration for all players in POE.
If the network environment you are in does not allow you to explore freely in the game, or even cause high latency, the system will help you automatically pause the instance exploration to prevent you from being hurt during the disconnection period. So with the help of this mechanism, those players who often experience lag will have a much lower chance of death than Hardcore players.
Of course, the developers are not partial, and Path of Exile also has a failsafe mechanism for hardcore players: if the game detects that the player’s client is no longer communicating, it will automatically pause the instance immediately. Although the detection element it has only looked at packet loss and frame rate issues, it is fast enough to prevent some abnormal deaths.
After Roberts introduced the pause mechanism in POE 3.26 for players, he said that not all game content in Wraeclast can be paused. In order to fully maintain fairness, all pinnacle boss encounters in the game will not be able to use pause.
Their consideration is to prevent some players from abusing the pause right to cheat, such as pressing Esc to observe what the boss’s next attack is or where the attack range will be.
In this case, the developers believe that it not only retains the highest challenge difficulty in POE, but also allows players to get super high flexibility in other aspects besides this content. They are even very confident that the addition of this system can attract more new players.
In fact, since the developer announced that the pause mechanism will be added to the game, the attitude of players towards it has been mixed.
Especially after the announcement that Mercenaries of Trarthus challenge league would allow players to hire a mercenary to be your 0.5 teammate, players became even less optimistic about the pause mechanism. Because while you are exploring with your mercenaries, you can only mark yourself as paused, and the battle continues.
Not only that, but disabling the ability to pause during pinnacle boss encounters, which are extremely prone to death, is another point that players are very unhappy about.
Originally, the number of deaths and penalties for players in this high-difficulty challenge were already very high. After the pause mechanism was banned, the difficulty of the challenge can be said to have been taken to a higher level.
In summary, the developers added a pause mechanism to balance the exploration fairness in the game and disabled it in some difficult content, but players said that this would make some challenges that were originally difficult to win more difficult, thus further undermining the players’ confidence in exploration. So what is your judgment about it?
With PoE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League approaching, are you ready?
As we all know, the beginning stage is always the most critical moment in the game, just like building a house, the foundation is always the most important. A good starter build will always determine whether you can have a far superior advantage when you start the league and enter the endgame earlier, which is a vast difference between having to stagnate for a while because of using an inappropriate build.
Therefore, here we have sorted out the starter builds for various different play styles to ensure that everyone can find the most suitable one for you! Whether you have already chosen your initial equipment or you like to leave it until the last minute, it is always beneficial to get more information and know which builds are more popular. Let’s get started.
Let’s start with a build that is likely to become mainstream in the early stages of the league, which is Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Berserker.
While this isn’t a brand new build that just appeared in POE 3.26, it’s perfectly positioned in the meta as a strong successor to the severely nerfed Lightning Strike.
Volcanic Fissure of Snaking is a melee slam attack with great scaling and huge single target damage. When you slam the ground, you create a winding rift that deals area damage as it moves outward. Once it reaches the target location, the rift bursts, dealing damage to the target area, and the rift keeps moving towards enemies, dealing further damage.
Not only that, this build has great synergy with Warcries, and since it’s auto-cast, you don’t even need to press an extra button.
In addition, its spawning power is pretty strong thanks to Ascendancy rework and the use of Endurance Charges and other defensive layers. The explosive visual effects brought by this build will also bring you a feast for the eyes and ears!
Moving on to Penance Brand of Dissipation Inquisitor, which really shocked me by surviving 3.26 patch.
Despite being one of the most powerful skills in Path Of Exile in the past, it has not been nerfed at all in the latest update because of its mechanics and scaling to billions of DPS. And now, with updates to skills like Righteous Fire of Arcane Devotion, it could be even more powerful.
This build is excellent at farming content like Ultimatum and Simulacrums, and can even handle endgame bosses if you’re willing to spend some POE currency to equip it with the right unique items.
While it’s not a fast clearer, it can be very efficient when you commit to the right farming strategy. Not only does it give you the thrill of a rain of Divine Orbs dropping, but the entry cost is fairly low and more importantly it scales impressively into the late game, which is why this build has always been at the top of the popular build charts over the past year.
Next up is Explosive Concoction, a pure League starter that can be used as a temporary build while you prepare for a real endgame setup.
For this build’s Ascendancy, Slayer class is the first choice for most players, but in fact, any class on the right side of the passive tree is applicable, and its flexibility determines that it can be your excellent League starter. Even if you don’t choose Ascendancy class, it can still help you get to the endgame, which is exciting!
Then there is Poisonous Concoction of Bouncing Pathfinder, which is also a strong starter build.
Poisonous Concoction causes projectiles to bounce randomly in a non-linear manner, and the damage of the explosion scales according to the area of effect.
Note that choosing this build as a starter does not mean you have to use it for the entire League. It is perfect for fans who are eager to build a small army of soldiers, starting with the low-cost and reliable Archer Skeletons, and transitioning to Skeletal Mage on a small budget.
If you like to summon an army to help you, then this build is definitely for you, it is arguably the best minion build for early leagues. It has always been strong, and the latest patch has given it some indirect buffs.
Also, there is a very interesting build, Flameblast of Celerity Totem, which is probably the most buffed skill in POE 3.26 update.
It now does 660% more damage at the maximum stage, and the new gem quality increases its damage by 40%. Since you can get a gem quality of up to 104 by using Ashes of the Stars and buffing it to level 4, it means that the quality alone can cause 208% additional damage.
Therefore, the damage effect brought by this spell totem is absolutely ridiculous, you don’t even need to worry about aiming or charging, the patch gave it a better cast speed and lower mana cost.
Finally, my personal favorite Lightning Arrow Deadeye build is a lot of fun, traversing the map at the speed of light, leaping over enemies and firing thousands of projectiles. Although Arrow has been nerfed in POE 3.26 and doesn’t perform well on a budget, this is also the right starter build for you if you want to have fun.
In short, no matter what your play style is, you can find the best starter build for you here. Maybe you can try something new, they may bring you unprecedented experience!
Last week, after the developers of Path of Exile held a live broadcast about 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League, they released a full description of the entire update, and the introduction of some new and improved features made many players look forward to this new league.
However, the changes to Shaper of Winter passive skill of Elementalist, Ascendancy class that players have always loved, have caused opposition from some players who are keen to use elemental damage such as freezing and frost to complete all campaign content, because its effectiveness has been greatly weakened compared to the previous patch.
But in fact, it is not. This guide will compare the current description of Shaper of Winter in the game with its update notes, and analyze for you from multiple attributes and statistics presented to you whether this change is a sign of the developers giving up this style of play or an early attempt to find a different way.
This 3.26 patch notes originally released by the developers state that the changes to Shaper of Winter include increasing the maximum Cold Ailments Effect by 50%, increasing Chills inflicted by each hit, and removing the previous effect of reducing enemy movement speed by 15% - 40%.
Instead, this Notable will only cause enemies that are Chilled by you to deal 50% of your Chill Effect. For example, if you can deal 30% Chill, the damage dealt by Chilled enemies will be reduced by 15%. Not only that, these already Chilled enemies will be more vulnerable to this longer duration damage, and the damage they receive will be increased by the Chills effect.
With this change, builds with Shaper of Winter Notable activated can still rely on strong offensive gear with high POE Currency investment to have strong Chills damage even when taking any type of hit damage, which is very suitable for encounters with monsters with strong offensive capabilities or elite monsters.
However, the developers made another change to Shaper of Winter Ascendancy Passive Skill in the patch notes of June 9 update: the previous slow down debuff of up to 40% was returned to players, which means that your powerful Chills damage and action speed debuff can help you complete encounters with more flexible bosses more easily and smoothly.
Judging from the comments in the player community and social media, the biggest complaint from players about the changes to Shaper of Winter is that the developers removed a lot of direct damage buffs that players saw and added new effects that did not directly make their builds more powerful.
But if those players calm down and analyze rationally, they are likely to modify their negative comments. First, before determining how much actual damage you can get from the modifiers that Shaper of Winter provides to Chills. If you only have this one damage type in your build, then a 30% modifier means you can cast 30% more damage.
It has to be said that in the more than ten years of POE development, there is no optimal build that focuses on only one source of damage. So if you add gear that can cast Unnerve debuff to your build and buy POE currency to increase your spell damage by 10%, then the actual damage gain from the modifier provided by this passive skill may only be 27%.
Of course, when making a build, you must add some crowd control modifiers, such as Shock debuff that make enemies stand still and vulnerable to damage, which can generally be up to 50%. With these modifiers working together, the additional damage provided by the modifier of Chill damage buff may only be 18%-19%.
In addition to this, like chaos damage, vulnerability, and physical damage modifiers that can be added to a build will reduce Chill damage bonus that the original Shaper of Winter had, preventing it from being able to reach its maximum effect.
So it was a very correct decision for the developers to remove this passive skill effect that is not conducive to players’ exploration in the game and balance the offensive and defensive effects brought by Shaper of Winter.
First of all, the up to 40% enemy speed debuff that players had before is still there, so your build defense ability has been greatly improved. And reducing the enemy’s damage ability by half will put you in an advantageous position in the battle from the beginning.
Secondly, on the offensive side, you can combine Chill effect of this passive skill with Bonechill Support, so that you have higher cold damage and can more easily deal with enemies and bosses that have no resistance to this element type.
Not only that, in POE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas League, the developers will bring some new Uniques to players, among which Ahuana’s Bite, a Unique Quiver, makes up for Chill Effect buff removed by Shaper of Winter in the build. And most importantly, it will not stack with other elemental damage affixes.
So in summary, Shaper of Winter changes are actually good news for builds that focus on cold damage, but builds with a variety of elemental damage may see some nerfs when using this passive skill, but it’s not a big deal.
Which builds are likely to be most affected by this change? Those builds with limited access to increased damage taken on the enemy are probably some of them.
Of course, in the regular exploration process after the new Secrets of the Atlas League is released, we highly recommend heading over to the major communities and social platforms to find the build that works best for you. And here will continue to pay attention and introduce it to you. I wish you a happy game!
After the live hosted by the developers to introduce the new content contained in Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas, players are getting more and more excited about the arrival of this long-awaited new league, because some changes it has will greatly improve the game experience that players can get.
For example, the crafting mechanism. In all previous leagues, the crafting system can be said to be one of the most important game mechanisms in POE, because it allows all players to make a piece of gear that can be used to increase their own combat or defensive capabilities through some efforts, so as to explore more freely.
In Secrets of the Atlas, the developers have made comprehensive improvements to the crafting system, including the introduction of some new crafting mechanisms and improvements to some existing mechanisms, which will help you find Zana in Atlas more easily and complete all the campaigns in the game.
In order to let all exiles master it faster, here will be an in-depth discussion of the new crafting system in POE 3.26. However, it should be noted that since there is still some time before its official release, some properties or statistics introduced in it may change. Everything is subject to the official release.
In this League update, the developers have added two new crafting mechanics for players - Memory Strands and a new pinnacle crafting currency. Here are their specific effects.
This new crafting mechanic is currently the highlight of PoE 3.26. You can find Memory Strands on the item description of high-tier loot picked up in Memory-influenced maps, and the value it has will affect the quality of the item after Scroll of Wisdom, up to 100.
Although the value of Memory Strands on the item is completely random, you can replace or add modifiers to it by applying POE Chaos Orb or Exalted Orb to make it more likely to generate a higher quality random affix for the item.
However, it should be noted here that Memory Strands cannot be used in other non-currency crafting methods, such as fossils or crafting benches.
Thanks to Zana, PoE 3.26 adds three new Pinnacle Bosses - The Incarnation of Dread, Neglect and Fear - who drop new loot with unique effects, such as Starcaller Axe, as well as some new exclusive crafting currencies:
In addition to the new crafting mechanics above, the developers have also improved existing systems in the game, such as Betrayal, Recombinator, and Syndicate crafting bench. Next, here will introduce them one by one.
In POE 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas, Betrayal league mechanic, which has existed for more than 10 years, has undergone a major change: Veiled modifiers that were previously unique to it will no longer be obtained through uncovering items.
Now, they have become the core of the current game. When you find some Veiled Items in a boss encounter or some endgame maps, you can right-click at any time to open Unveil screen, which greatly facilitates the player’s exploration process.
Betrayal changes bring back Veiled Chaos Orb to the game, which can allow you to reforge rare items with random modifiers and add Veiled Modifier to them.
However, in the current game content, it has been renamed Veiled Exalted Orb, and its effectiveness has changed a bit: it can remove a random modifier from an item and add a Veiled modifier to it.
Introduced in 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur league, Recombinator was very popular with players when it was first launched because it allowed you to combine two non-unique items with the same base into an item with a random combination of modifiers.
However, due to the randomness of the modifiers that are included in the final items, many players have received completely useless or extremely bad modifiers after handing in some items, which has caused a lot of complaints.
So in this update, the developers have added an option for players to choose their desired modifiers to make this random event a fixed event that players can create.
In previous game content, completing the raid of Syndicate safehouses and spending POE currency awarded to you to craft high-quality gear was a favorite among players. Previously, players only received crafting materials and currency, but now, the crafting bench will also have pre-generated craftable items and other rewards.
Above are some of the new additions and production changes that the developers have brought to players with Path of Exile 3.26 Secrets of the Atlas. In fact, judging from the live and update notes held by the developers, this new league must be a carnival for new and old exiles, and everyone can feel the sincerity and repentance of the developers in it. I wish you a happy game!