How To Make Chaos Blazing Salvo Totem Hierophant Build With Extremely Low Budget In POE 3.22?
In today’s guide I’ll show you my POE 3.22 league starter build, Chaos Blazing Salvo Totem Hierophant build, dual wielding Consuming Dark Dagger.
This Dagger can convert 30% of Fire damage into Chaos damage. By dual wielding it, we can convert 60% of Fire damage to Chaos damage. For this, I decided to run a Totem Hierophant build. This build is fantastic for leveling. I could easily clear the level 16 map with a budget of less than 20 Chaos Orbs.
Pros & Cons
In addition to being extremely cheap and having decent damage as a league starter build, this build is also very beginner friendly. There’s nothing too complicated about the mechanics of this build, so anyone can easily follow this guide.
This build allows you to always stay on the move. You can run around avoiding enemies while occasionally dropping a Totem.
The downside of this build is also pretty obvious, you can’t deal damage yourself, all damage comes from your Totem. Meanwhile, this build has very little evasion and no spell suppression.
Gear Setup
In addition to converting our damage into Chaos damage, Consuming Dark Dagger also provides a massive damage boost. The price of this Dagger at the start of Crucible league was a Chaos Orb, and I expect it to stay the same for the next league.
For body armor, I’m using Soul Mantle. It’s the best slot in any Spell Totem build. Unless you’re playing something like Shockwave Totem with built-in Spell Totem Support.
The downside of Soul Mantle is that when your Totem dies, you’re affected by random spells. But that’s okay, because we’ll turn that shortcoming into a positive. I’ll get to that later.
Kikazaru is a must have for this build, as it reduces the effect of curses on you by 60%. The ring also provides some health and mana regeneration, which is great for this build.
The helmet I use is Mindspiral, which should cost around one Chaos Orb at the start of the league. The main reason I use this helmet is the huge mana and mana regen.
I chose Mind Over Matter Keystone on the passive skill tree, so whenever I get hit, 40% of the damage is deducted from mana before draining life. Unless we were fatally hit or stood for a long time, we rarely died. We just need to leave after being hit, and I will restore our health and mana to full.
Therefore, this helmet is very important for mana maintenance, because it allows us to restore some damage taken as mana. By using this helmet, we also gain a portion of mana as an additional energy shield.
Because this build accumulates a lot of manas. I inserted a despair curse on the hit ring. But the ring isn’t mandatory. You can still self cast Despair or link it to Arcanist Brand. It’s just slower at mapping. The rest of my gear was something I found myself to limit my resistance and get the flexibility I needed for this build.
Flask Setup
My Flask is nothing special. Diamond Flask for damage, Granite Flask for more armor, Silver Flask for increased casting speed and movement speed. Also, my Flask’s duration is increased, but it’s not required.
Gem Setup
Here is my Gem setup for Blazing Salvo Totem. It’s a 4-Link, but since we’re using Soul Mantle, our setup here is a 5-Link.
It requires multiple Spell Totem Support, otherwise we would end up with only 3 Totems. Because we can’t use a shield with a Totem mod. We can associate Zealotry with Eternal Blessing Support. This way we don’t have to keep any mana and can free up our mana pools for Mind Over Matter mechanic.
Wither increases Chaos damage enemies take and is tied to faster casting to apply as many Wither stacks as possible. I only cast this ability when facing tank rarities or bosses.
We tied Flame Dash to low level Arcane Surge Support to trigger Arcane Surge as often as possible. Stone Golem can restore some health and Whirling Blades. We have to use Whirling Blades, as Shield Charge is not available with this build. However, I’m so used to using Flame Dash that I rarely use Whirling Blades. I’m just putting this setup here for those who prefer movement skills other than Flame Dash.
Ascendancy Class
Continuing with my Ascendancy, we chose Hierophant because it’s Ascendancy that specializes in Totem. It provides a totem, lots of damage and mana, and some defense.
Self-Flagellation Jewel Turns Curse Into Advantage
As for my Jewel, Self-Flagellation is mandatory for this build. This should cause some confusion at the start of the league, but it’s totally worth it since it gives us a huge damage boost.
When playing this build we were getting 8-9 curses most of the time, so we were often taking up to 180% damage. Therefore, it is very necessary for us to use POE Currency to get a Self-Flagellation in advance. Curses are now 120% less effective on us, making us immune to curses unless enemies have increased effects of curses.
Leveling
I get all the nodes here and go out from here to get this health and damage nodes. I only get Totem node after Totem is full. For my gem progression, I’ve been leveling with Flame Wall and Blazing Salvo Totem before I get to the full Totem.
This is Chaos Blazing Salvo Totem Hierophant build I made on a tiny budget in POE 3.22 league. Hope this guide helps you understand the basic mechanics of how this Totem Hierophant build works. See you in the game.
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Path of Exile 3.27 Keepers of the Flame introduces a brand new crafting system: Genesis Tree. Players can find it in Monastery of the Keepers and unlock a passive skill tree of the same name, allowing for different builds through customization.
As a league-exclusive mechanic, Genesis Tree allows players to cultivate unique items, rare gear, or currency with highly customizable outcomes. It ensures or significantly increases the chance of obtaining specific items that would otherwise be extremely difficult or impossible to craft.
If you're interested in Genesis Tree crafting system, let's take a look!
Enhancing Early Item Quality
First, let's discuss the power of Genesis Tree in gear crafting.
When it comes to crafting gear, the first thing that comes to mind is linked items, which are often obtainable early on, but these items often just end up piling up in your inventory.
Typically, you'll see a 5-linked item early in the campaign, but it's unusable because it's based on all Dexterity stats, while you're playing a character focused on all Strength. This leaves many 5 & 6-linked items useless.
However, Genesis Tree now offers a very efficient way to obtain usable linked items, especially 5-6-linked ones. This is because it has some tweaks that allow you to randomly generate sockets and links when crafting gear, retaining the highest stat, repeating this 10 times.
Meanwhile, you can combine this with Jeweller's Orb from PoE 3.27 to randomly reset the number of gear sockets. The new number of sockets depends on the gear's type and level, improving with each 1% increase in gear quality. Alternatively, you can use multiple Jeweller's Orbs in Crafting Bench to obtain a specific number of sockets.
You'll find that when you combine these two methods and level up slightly, say to Act 4-5, you'll often get 5-link items. Of course, with continued experimentation, getting 6-link items is just a matter of time, depending on how frequently you craft.
Therefore, as you progress through the game, you have more opportunities to obtain usable 5-6 link equipment. This is undoubtedly a very powerful feature of Genesis Tree.
Item Modifiers
Furthermore, Genesis Tree influences the crafting system by allowing you to customize passive skills that determine the modifiers of items generated from Wombgifts. Through nodes, you can influence the type of modifiers, such as increasing or decreasing the spawn rate of certain modifiers. You can also specialize in crafting unique items by having items generate with Foulborn modifiers.
Genesis Tree can also influence the level of modifiers. Some nodes can increase the overall level of modifiers, while others focus on eliminating low-level modifiers, which can be beneficial or detrimental depending on the specific situation.
Because blindly removing passive skills with low-level modifiers can lead to losing desirable stats like +1 to gems on a wand, resulting in an item with fewer modifiers. Alternatively, you might end up with an item with the correct modifiers but a low level, which may not be sufficient for a late-game build.
Fortunately, Genesis Tree itself can be reset for free, without costing gold or any penalty for undoing. So you can experiment with different modifiers completely free of charge.
It's worth noting that the skill tree has a unique crafting subsection that allows you to generate Foulborn versions of existing unique items. These unique items can replace the original modifiers, potentially creating powerful items suitable for specific builds.
Grafts System & Graftblood
Next, we'll discuss Grafts mechanic in Genesis Tree, a new type of equipment item that provides passive skill bonuses. In PoE The Keepers league, Grafts system adds a new layer to item crafting, offering unique skills and attributes and requiring special crafting methods.
Players can craft items using Grafts exclusive currency, and even mutate existing unique items into Foulborn versions, creating a powerful but potentially gamble-like equipment system.
To craft items with Grafts, you can either use them directly to gain unique abilities or collect Graftblood, which can be used in Genesis Tree to influence crafting results and customize Grafts' effects.
Therefore, Graftblood, the exclusive currency for Grafts, is another important component of Genesis Tree, used to enhance and modify Graft items in the skill tree - a part that many players understand the least.
Since the release of PoE 3.27, some players have frequently boasted about obtaining piles of Divine Orbs or Mirrors-level items, but frankly, this is the most tedious part of the skill tree. Fortunately, we can still use it for some things.
Because some new currency items can only be obtained from this part of the talent tree, and Graft items cannot be crafted using regular PoE currency; they must be crafted using Graftblood from the talent tree. Therefore, this part of the skill tree will always be useful, as these currency items should be very practical, especially in the late game when players want to maximize gear stats. So, the currency section of Genesis Tree will always have its place.
Furthermore, the 3.27 expansion introduced a new type of currency item, somewhat similar to Greater & Perfect Jeweller Orbs in Path of Exile 2. While they look very similar, they function quite differently.
In Path of Exile 2, those Greater and Perfect Jeweller's Orbs essentially meant you couldn't obtain modifiers below a certain level. In Path of Exile 1, these new currency items indicate a higher chance of obtaining higher-level modifiers. So, they function more like Fossils in the game.
Fossils indicate a higher spawn rate for a particular modifier, therefore its wait time is longer than other modifiers. This is essentially what's going to happen: it will increase the wait time for these higher-level modifiers. We don't know exactly how much it will increase, but it will definitely increase your chances of obtaining higher-level modifiers.
In summary, the main advantage of Genesis Tree in PoE 3.27 lies in its high potential for crafting and gear acquisition, especially in crafting 6-link items and unique gear, and the fact that resetting talent points is completely free. However, certain nodes and modifiers can still have negative effects and severely hinder your crafting results.
Path of Exile 3.26 was one of the most lucrative seasons ever. However, in PoE 3.27: Keepers of the Flame, players will see a significant decrease in overall currency acquisition due to direct nerfs to Map Modifier Effects, Item Quantity, and certain farming strategies.
So what should you farm in this league to maximize farming efficiency? This depends on which strategies and mechanics remain unaffected and which methods are more stable.
S-Tier Farming Strategies
Awakened Harvest
Awakened Harvest focuses on maximizing Lifeforce from Harvests using Crop Rotation Harvest strategy. It is unaffected by the general nerfs this season because its gains primarily come from fixed crafting.
Lifeforce is always an essential crafting resource, so its value remains stable. This strategy directly leads to increased demand for Horned Scarab of Awakening, making other strategies using this scarab unprofitable.
Blight Map Farming
This strategy focuses on Blight encounters on specific maps, yielding large amounts of currency and items from monsters and Blight chests.
This was considered the best map farming strategy last season. While affected by the reduced map count and affix effects, all map farming strategies are impacted, so it may still remain the strongest map farming method.
Expedition (Early League)
This strategy primarily involves interacting with Expedition Logbooks, defeating monsters, and completing quests for Dannig, Gwennen, Tujen, and Rog.
This is one of the best currency production methods at the start of the season. Expedition Logbooks are in high demand, and the new asynchronous trading changes make them easier to sell, but this will decrease later in the season.
Ultimatum
You gain stacking rewards by completing Ultimatum trials. While this mechanic hasn't been weakened, its strength depends on player builds and strategies.
Its profitability is limited by its extremely high difficulty. However, there are specific builds that allow players to cheat or AFK to complete the trial, such as CWDT Chieftain. If you have such a build, Ultimatum becomes very easy and highly rewarding.
Strongboxes High Investment
This method primarily uses scarabs and map affixes to strengthen Strongboxes on the map, especially Ambush Scarab of Containment, to obtain a large number of items. This is considered the meta strategy of the season, extremely stable and reliable, and a core part of high-end item farming.
A-Tier Farming Strategies
Essence
This strategy primarily involves capturing Essence monsters on the map to obtain various Essences. It is ideal for accumulating initial currency at the beginning of the season. The returns are stable because Essences are a hard requirement for crafting and are not affected by map quantity or affix effects. Although Remnant of Corruption has changed, the impact is minimal.
Blight Currency Farming
Blight Currency Farming is similar to Blight Map Farming, but focuses more on quickly completing Blight events on regular maps to obtain currency. This was one of the strongest strategies last season, but it has been downgraded from S to A due to the reduced map quantity and affix effects.
Strongboxes Low Investment
Simply put, this is a strategy of investing in strongboxes at a lower cost. It remains A-tier, just like in patch 3.26, because its base returns are very stable and substantial.
Allflame Ember Of The Ethereal Scarab Farm
You need to use Allflame Ember of the Ethereal to enhance monsters on maps to increase the drop rate of specific types of scarabs. This strategy is popular among players, but because its returns depend on map monster drops, it is affected by the reduced quantity and affix effects. Also, the supply of Allflame Ember of the Ethereal is limited, and its value will adjust itself to maintain profitability.
Delirium Orb Farming
This strategy primarily involves farming Delirium Orbs in large quantities by running Delirium maps or encountering them. It's especially effective late in the season when demand for Delirium Orbs is high. Delirium Orb Farming is also decent early in the season as it drops other items. It can be done on rare maps and has lower build requirements.
Divination Card Farming
This mechanic requires you to farm high-value Divination Cards on specific maps and bosses. You'll need to combine this with Strongboxes strategy, especially Scarab of Containment, to increase Divination Card drops. This strategy is quite profitable but requires strong builds.
B-Tier Farming Strategies
Alva Temple Farming
You need to invite Alva into the map through Master Quests or Scarabs, build The Temple of Atzoatl, and obtain rewards such as double Corruption Rooms. This strategy is poor early in the season but becomes extremely profitable late in the season when players start gambling on double Corruption Rooms.
Kalguuran Map Farm
This is a simple map farming strategy focused on encounters with Kalguuran warriors. Your build shouldn't be too strong or too weak, and can be paired with useful scarabs.
Bestiary
You need to capture red beasts in Bestiary to sell or use for your crafting. This method is similar to Essence, providing a stable, quantity-independent drop rate with consistent market demand, especially good at the start of the season.
Harvest Carnicopia
Harvest Carnicopia is a more stable harvest farming strategy, but with a lower hourly yield cap than Awakening Harvest. It's better suited for players who prefer low randomness and consistent returns.
Legion (Late League)
You need to activate Timeless Monolith on the map, release and defeat Eternal Empire warriors to obtain badges and loot. This is the best farming strategy for days 1-2 of the season, but its value drops rapidly afterward. While Legions remain decent in the later stages, they require top-tier builds, and better options may exist at this point.
Stacked Deck Farming
You'll need to acquire Stacked Decks through various means and sell them, or start your own gamble. The significant quality-of-life improvement this season may increase demand.
Ritual
You'll need to complete Ritual Altar challenges and exchange tributes for rewards. This method is reliable but not particularly outstanding, except for the occasional Nameless Altar spawn, which are worth multiple POE Divine Orbs. The recent changes have slightly nerfed this, but the impact is minimal.
Betrayal
By interacting with Einhar's betrayal members, you'll build a network to target rewards such as Allflame and Medallions.
Due to the nerf to Graves and the complexity of setting up networks, PoE 3.27 focuses on zero-setup strategies that only farm Allflame and Medallions. Medals have been buffed, but the value of Allflame is expected to decrease.
These are some of the juiciest farming strategies. There are many other farming strategies besides these, but these strategies are highly dependent on luck and may even result in losses, so they are not recommended.
In Path of Exile Patch 3.27 Keepers of the Flame update that will arrive on October 31st, the most notable change was undoubtedly the complete rework of Shadow's Assassin Ascendancy.
This update aims to fundamentally reshape Assassin, replacing most of the existing passives with new nodes that offer different or more powerful effects. Even the nodes that are retained have undergone balance adjustments to improve their usability.
Preliminary analysis suggests that these changes are expected to elevate Ascendancy from a niche pick to a top choice, boasting both exceptional DPS and robust survivability. Let's take a look at the changes.
Critical Strike And Poison
Assassin's core role has always revolved around critical hits and poison. This rework strengthens this feature while also making its builds smoother and more powerful.
Critical Strike
The brand-new Assassination Style Notable is the cornerstone of this new power system, providing massive Critical Hit Chance and Damage Bonus bonuses, and allowing players to make meaningful choices between two powerful child nodes:
1. Knife In The Back
This option enhances your initial attack, granting 100% additional Critical Strike Chance against enemies that are not at low health. More importantly, it provides an amazing 100% additional Critical Strike Multiplier against low-health enemies.
This is essentially equivalent to having a built-in finishing move, allowing you to eliminate tough enemies at an astonishing speed, further enhancing efficiency.
2. For The Jugular
This option reverses the logic above, providing 100% extra Critical Strike Chance against low-health enemies, ensuring you can land consistent critical hits on dangerous, dying enemies.
Meanwhile, the 100% bonus Critical Strike Multiplier applies to enemies that are not low on health, allowing you to unleash devastating opening attacks and quickly reduce enemies to low health.
This flexibility allows players to make relative adjustments according to their needs – whether it's quickly cultivating the map or focusing on boss battles.
Poison
The poison build has also received a revolutionary update. Although Toxic Delivery node's poison damage from critical hits has been reduced from 25% to 20%, it has gained extremely valuable utility.
The previous conditional critical strike chance bonus has been replaced by a new mechanic: each 4-second poison effect you apply will grant you an extension of the poison duration, up to a maximum of 100%. This significantly increases damage uptime, especially against bosses with long phases.
In addition, the new effect of restoring 0.5% health for each poisoned enemy killed provides players with a stable and considerable health recovery in dense groups of monsters.
Crucially, the new node Infused Toxins, located after Toxic Delivery, now allows all attack damage to inflict poison. This design makes poison builds smoother than ever before.
Survival And Functionality Enhancements
The main weakness of Assassins lies in their relatively weak defenses compared to other Ascendancy instances. Path of Exile Patch 3.27 updates directly addresses this issue by adding several powerful survival-oriented nodes.
Shadowed Blood
This is a landmark defensive node that converts 40% of Physical Damage into Recouped as Life, a capability that fundamentally changes Assassin's resilience against physical damage.
Unaffected by Damaging Ailments is also a great advantage. For example, it grants immunity to Bleeding, Poison, and Ignite effects. This single point provides significant recovery and damage reduction, allowing Assassins to confront enemies who unleash these effects head-on.
Opportunistic
This node has been significantly enhanced and now provides 35% damage reduction when there are at least two Rare or Unique Enemies nearby. This is an extremely powerful defensive bonus, making Assassins surprisingly resilient in the most dangerous situations.
Deathmarked
This new node is a top-tier, practical damage-boosting tool that automatically triggers a level 30 Assassin's Mark when dealing critical hits to Rare or Unique Enemies, a huge improvement to the experience.
It eliminates the need for manual mark application, simplifying the process and ensuring key bosses are always marked. Its additional benefit - making your mark ability mana-free and preventing marked enemies from dodging attacks - further enhances accuracy against highly evasive opponents.
Other Mechanics
This rework also introduced some mechanisms, opening up entirely new build possibilities:
Unstable Infusion
Its chance of gaining energy charges on non-critical hits is increased to 30%, and the chance of gaining energy charges on critical hits is increased to 15%, making it more stable to maintain critical hit charges. This, in turn, leads to more stable Critical Hit Chance and Damage Bonus.
Mystical Infusion
This node is revolutionary for hybrid playstyles. It makes Base Spell Critical Strike Chance of spells equivalent to the critical strike chance of Main Hand Weapon, which means that some critical strike-dependent playstyles are no longer entirely reliant on specific high-critical-strike spells or daggers.
This allows players to creatively use high critical strike rate weapons to drive spell critical strike effects.
In conclusion, Assassin rework in Path of Exile Patch 3.27 is not a simple numerical adjustment, but a complete overhaul of the concept. It retains the core characteristics of the class while solving its previous weaknesses.
The updates clearly show that Assassin is no longer a single-function class, but a versatile, powerful, and robust top-tier option. Get ready to shine in Keepers of the Flame release!
Since its stable release, nearly every league in Path of Exile 1 has had a unique theme and core league mechanics that complement it. Combined with old changes, all new leagues offer an upgraded gameplay experience based on the existing PoE experience.
After the livestream, the core gameplay of 3.27 Keepers of the Flame league, which launches on October 31, 2025, was finally revealed, along with all the new changes and content.
Interestingly, 3.27 Keepers challenge leagues not only introduce a new story but are also essentially an extension of the established Breach mechanic. Below, we'll provide a detailed introduction to the core mechanics and other key changes to 3.27 league.
What Is Breach?
To fully experience Keepers challenge leagues, you first need to have a detailed understanding of Breach mechanic itself, not just how to earn rewards from it.
Breach was introduced as early as 2016 with the eponymous PoE 1 league and has since been retained in the base game. After years of refinement and adjustments, it has now become a mature endgame feature.
Regular Breaches spawn randomly on the game map and can be identified by a hand icon within a purple circle. Approaching them triggers a Breach and begins clearing the monsters spawned within. Each Breach lasts for at least 30 seconds, extending up to 60 seconds.
Note that to claim PoE currency dropped, you must kill breach monsters. Furthermore, enemies spawned by Vaal Breach do not drop XP or other items.
Breach In Keepers Of The Flame Challenge League
In fact, not only are the mechanics closely related, but 3.27 league itself can be considered a sequel to 2.5.0 Breach League.
In this new league, the evil Breachlords plan to expand their influence in Wraeclast. To combat them, Ailith has created Order of Keepers of the Flame. Your goal is to join Ailith in destroying all Breach monsters.
Upon entering Mud Flats area, you'll find it overrun by Breach monsters attempting to establish their lair. Ailith's fire powers are effective against them, provided you can help her fend off their attacks.
If you encounter an Unstable Breach caused by the massive Breach Hand, more monsters will emerge, requiring you to quickly defeat them to ensure Ailith can safely clear them with her fire.
After Breach stabilizes, Vruun, Marshal of Xesht, will appear as a boss. You must defeat him to permanently seal Breach and claim your rewards.
What Is Genesis Tree?
As your collaboration with Ailith deepens, she will eventually lead you to Monastery of Keepers, where you can unlock Genesis Tree. Think of it as a specialized Mastery Tree, where you invest points to earn rewards and special Grafts.
Grafts are a new way of granting buffs. By fusing breach hands with your character, you gain access to a variety of new active and passive skills, with up to 16 Grafts to choose from.
Once these Breach hands are implanted, you can collect Graftblood from defeating Breach monsters in battle. This Graftblood can then be invested in Genesis Tree to accelerate its growth, unlocking more rewards.
Grafts not only grant additional skills, but also modify your gear. However, grafted gear cannot be modified or reset with standard currency. Fortunately, Genesis Tree itself offers a very good node investment.
How To Complete Keepers Challenge League?
Based on the core mechanics described above, you can choose to complete 3.27 league in standard, hardcore, or solo self-found modes, depending on your ability.
These three modes share the same core mechanics, but you can create private leagues and add mods to enrich the gameplay, customizing your own Keepers challenge league.
Keepers Challenge League includes 40 new challenges and 8 Ruthless Keepers Challenges. Completing a certain number of challenges in both challenge modes gives you a chance to receive pieces of Keeper of the Flame Armor Set, a 3.27 league-exclusive reward.
In addition, starting with Challenge 19, every three challenges you complete will earn you pieces of Keeper Totem Pole decoration.
The completed totem pole will then remain permanently in your hideout, representing the number of challenges you've completed during 3.27 league.
New Bloodlines System
In addition to utilizing Genesis Tree, Keepers of the Flame League introduces another new mechanic: Bloodlines. Think of them as secondary Ascendancy classes that can be enhanced by allocating Ascendancy passive skill points.
Reliably, there are no restrictions on the use of Bloodlines; as long as you earn a Bloodline by killing an endgame boss, you can pair it with any Ascendancy class you already own. A total of 10 Bloodlines are available.
It's important to note that Bloodlines and Ascendancy classes share the same passive skill points, so it's crucial to carefully consider your needs when allocating them to ensure each skill point is maximized.
Asynchronous Trade Finally Launches
Ever since the initial leaks of 3.27 league, many players have been eager for Path of Exile to implement asynchronous trade or other similar mechanisms in this league, aligning it with PoE 2 and making the game's trading system more convenient.
So, once 3.27 league launches, as long as you've unlocked Act 6, you can visit Faustus in Lioneye's Watch and have him manage your Merchant's Tabs. This way, other players can automatically trade with you even when you're offline.
If you acquired Premium Stash Tabs before 3.26 league launched, you can unlock asynchronous trade using Mercant's Tab Upgrade tool on the game's official website. If you already have Merchant's Tabs unlocked in PoE 2, you can use them directly in 3.27 league.
The new content we've introduced here focuses primarily on mechanics and gameplay, but Keepers of the Flame will also bring many more subtle changes, such as new gems. Once the league launches, you can explore it in depth!
