How To Create A Low-Budget Starter Build In POE 3.23 Affliction League? - Lightning Conduit Elementalist

Path of Exile 3.27 has been out for over a month, and major content updates have ceased. Most players have likely switched to PoE 2, and those still playing PoE 1 are likely casual players.

Therefore, Cold DoT Elementalist build recommended today is perfect for casual players. It requires minimal investment, involves few actions, and is incredibly versatile.

Cold DoT Elementalist Advantages And Disadvantages

Cold DoT Elementalist is a very versatile build, with no weaknesses in farming or boss battles. This build primarily relies on DoT damage, so even if the weapon's damage is low, the impact is minimal.

This build can apply slowing and other negative effects to monsters, and although its health is relatively low, you can compensate by stacking energy shields, making it actually quite tanky. Additionally, this build can generate pulses periodically, enabling automatic farming.

However, as a DoT build, DoT damage has a cap, so even if you invest heavily in PoE Currency to acquire top-tier gear, your burst damage won't surpass that of burst builds. When facing bosses, you need to cast spells to stack DoTs, and fights against bosses with high Cold resistance can be lengthy.

Core Gameplay

This build's damage doesn't come from any single skill, but rather from multiple layers of Cold Damage over Time and large-area Chill crowd control. You simply need to keep moving, and mobs will die around you.

Therefore, your damage primarily comes from these skills:

• Creeping Frost
• Vortex
• Vaal Cold Snap

Once the ice field is established, players hardly need to cast spells frequently; simply keep moving, and monsters will be slowed, frozen, and naturally fall under the CTD damage. The key to achieving this is Vaal Cold Snap, which inflicts Cold DoTs and Chills on enemies within a certain area.

Building upon this, since enemies are almost constantly chilled or severely slowed, and DoT skills can be applied from a distance, you rarely need to engage in close-range combat. This means that even if your armor and elemental resistances aren't at their maximum, you can achieve high safety through control, distance, and timing.

However, when facing elite monsters or bosses, relying solely on Vaal Cold Snap is insufficient. You need to actively apply curses like Frostbite and sequentially apply Vortex, Creeping Frost, and Cold Snap to keep the target constantly in multiple frost zones. You need to amplify existing damage over time, not change your damage output.

Cold DoT Elementalist Gear

This build is playable regardless of your currency investment, and approximately 20 POE Divine Orbs are needed to make it run smoothly.

This build doesn't rely on specific gear, so you need to understand which affixes you need. Once you understand your damage and defense sources, you can then apply affixes to your gear yourself.

Weapons

• Recommended: Tulborn (Foulborn Version with +4 Cold Spell Skills)

For weapons, focus on the affixes Cold Damage over Time Multiplier and +Cold Skill Gems. The weapon type itself is irrelevant; as long as it contains these affixes, it's usable for a long time until you find something better.

Armor

• Recommended: Daresso's Courage, Rime Gaze

You don't need to deliberately stack resistances. What you need is health or energy shields to provide stable support for sustained combat and map movement. If your support gems require you to maintain low health, then stack more energy shields.

Resistances, status ailment immunity, and movement speed take priority over armor or evasion stats. Since enemies are often in a chilled state, you rarely suffer concentrated melee attacks, so gear should prioritize increasing survivability rather than tanking enemy damage.

Jewelry

• Recommended: Ashes of the Stars, The Hungry Loop, Triumvirate Authority.

For necklaces, rings, and belts, their primary function is to supplement resistances, provide attribute requirements, and further enhance Cold DoTs. If they can further increase DoT damage or skill level, it will significantly enhance overall output, but these are not necessary conditions for building a full set.

Cold DoT Elementalist Skills

• Chest Armor: Creeping Frost, Cruelty, Hypothermia, Swift Affliction, Elemental Focus, Controlled Destruction
• Helmet: Vortex, Cruelty, Controlled Destruction, Bonechill
• Gloves: Arctic Armour, Tempest Shield, Summon Stone Golem of Hordes, Malevolence
• Boots: Summon Lightning Golem, Summon Flame Golem, Summon Stone Golem, Summon Chaos Golem
• Ring 1: Animate Guardian, Elemental Weakness
• Ring 2: Vaal Cold Snap
• Main Hand Weapon: Shield Charge, Vaal Righteous Fire, Frostbite
• Off-Hand Weapon: Vitality, Arrogance, Flesh and Stone

Your DoT output primarily consists of Creeping Frost, Cold Snap, and Vortex. Creeping Frost creates a frozen path, while Cold Snap rapidly generates a Cold DoT area around you. Vortex unleashes a burst of energy, primarily used when enemies approach.

These three skills are sufficient for clearing maps and farming bosses. Other skills are mainly for triggering passive skill buffs, further enhancing your DoT.

Skills like Golem and Animate Guardian aren't direct sources of damage; they provide damage reduction, auras, or additional debuffs, making Frost DoTs last longer and have more consistent coverage. Especially in long boss fights, the indirect benefits of this type of gear are often more significant than simply stacking damage.

Passive Skill Tree Keystones

• Pain Attunement: Increases spell damage at low life.
• Hex Master: Reduces Curses damage, but grants unlimited damage over time.
• Eternal Youth: Reduces life regeneration efficiency and leech, allowing life to regenerate like an Eternal Youth.
• Zealot's Oath: Life regeneration effect can be applied to ES.

Masteries

• Cold Mastery (2)
• Elemental Mastery (1)
• Energy Shield Mastery (1)
• Damage Over Time Mastery (1)
• Reservation Mastery (1)
• Minion Offence Mastery (1)

Cold DoT Elementalist is very easy to play and can satisfy almost all endgame content. The process of clearing out mobs is also very smooth. You can try to optimize this build yourself.

If you're used to playing Ranger base class in Path of Exile 2, then the better Ascendancy class after patch 0.4.0 is Pathfinder, because the other one, Deadeye, has been nerfed in the new league.

As a long-standing popular Ascendancy class in PoE 2, Pathfinder's mainstream combat style focuses on poison mechanics and potion usage, allowing you to deal massive damage to enemies by utilizing thrown potions.

But if you want to try a different way to play Pathfinder, then try Lightning Crossbow Pathfinder Build! It combines the class's inherent advantages with specific spirit gems to deal massive lightning damage.

Next, we will introduce the crafting method and practical effects of this build.

Lightning Crossbow Pathfinder Build Overview

In addition to abilities related to poison and potions, Pathfinder's passive talents also include important buffs such as stun immunity and speed increases, providing more reliable mobility than most other classes.

Based on this, suitable weapons for you are lightweight and agile weapons such as bows or crossbows. Crossbows, besides being agile, also have good strength attributes, allowing for high-damage, high-precision shots at long range to penetrate enemies.

Lightning Crossbow Pathfinder Build combines these advantages and further adds the crossbow skill Galvanic Shards for damage output. During combat, you can also switch to other skills to quickly clear areas or perform effective single-target attacks.

Since the class and weapon characteristics mean your agility is already quite high, when choosing gear you should focus more on increasing fixed lightning or physical damage, and striving for high evasion and elemental resistance to improve survivability.

Which Skills Are Essential?

In this build, the most fundamental skills are some of Pathfinder's passive talents. Although they don't make up a large percentage of all Pathfinder skills, they significantly increase the build's speed potential:

• Passive Points: Generates more available passive points.
• Relentless Pursuit: Your speed is unaffected by slowing effects.
• Running Assault: When using skills while moving, the movement speed penalty is reduced by 50%.
• Skill Speed: Increases your skill speed by 4%.
• Traveller's Wisdom: Gain 5 passive skill points.

Combining these skills will not only provide you with a reliable foundation for mobility, but also make it difficult for enemies to reduce your speed through attacks in combat, allowing you to use your other offensive skills and weapons more consistently and accurately.

The main source of damage for this build is the skill gem Galvanic Shards, one of its features being that it must be used with a crossbow.

When equipped, this gem will load your crossbow with energized bolts, which are then fired in rapid succession, releasing chain lightning beams upon hitting enemies.

Each bolt deals 15-54% of base attack damage, converting 60% of physical damage into lightning damage, with a firing speed of up to 500 units per second.

The lightning beam converts 100% of physical damage into lightning damage, reaching a final value of 75-272%.

Next, we recommend equipping Flash Grenade skill. Each use consumes 10 mana, creating an explosion in a 2.6-meter radius that blinds enemies. The explosion lasts for 0.85 seconds and also increases stun accumulation speed by 400%.

Also, a crossbow-exclusive skill, Flash Grenade is valuable for its ability to deal massive damage and provide various practical functions, such as crowd control or stunning bosses, combining defensive capabilities and offensive burst damage for powerful combos.

If Flash Grenade helps you gain an advantage against groups of enemies, then Rapid Shot is an essential skill for increasing the build's single-target damage output.

It allows each clip to hold 100 bolts, converting your physical damage output into fire damage, and provides significant improvements in both attack speed and damage.

How To Choose Gear?

Undoubtedly, the main weapon must be a crossbow. After that, you can use the various currencies you earn to craft your crossbow, making it more powerful by rolling new affixes or increasing the rarity/affix bonus values.

The crossbow's prefixes mainly focus on increasing different types of elemental damage and accuracy, all of which are suitable for Lightning Crossbow Pathfinder Build. The suffixes are more varied, and you can choose based on your needs.

Below are all the crossbow types currently in the game:

• Advanced Bombard Crossbow
• Advanced Dyad Crossbow
• Advanced Forlorn Crossbow
• Advanced Sturdy Crossbow
• Advanced Tense Crossbow
• Advanced Varnished Crossbow
• Alloy Crossbow
• Blackfire Crossbow
• Bombard Crossbow
• Construct Crossbow
• Cumbrous Crossbow
• Dedalian Crossbow
• Dyad Crossbow
• Esoteric Crossbow
• Expert Bombard Crossbow
• Expert Dyad Crossbow
• Expert Forlorn Crossbow
• Expert Sturdy Crossbow
• Expert Tense Crossbow
• Expert Varnished Crossbow
• Makeshift Crossbow
• Piercing Crossbow
• Sturdy Crossbow
• Tense Crossbow
• Varnished Crossbow

Ideally, increased lightning damage and cold damage would be good prefixes, allowing you to inflict both shock and chill effects. If your crossbow lacks lightning damage, then socket two lightning gems into it.

For other gear, there's nothing particularly special to note about the amulet; just choose a good one from your loot. Boots should ideally increase movement speed, and gloves should provide a fixed damage bonus.

Practical Performance

If you haven't yet found a suitable crossbow at the beginning, using a bow to craft a Lightning Arrow build as a temporary solution is also acceptable. However, once you unlock the crossbow and the skills we mentioned, you must change your strategy promptly.

Lightning Crossbow Pathfinder Build might feel a bit clunky when clearing mobs in the early game, as you might not initially master the technique of throwing and detonating grenades, but you'll get better with practice.

So, If you're tired of Poison Pathfinder build and don't want to create a new character, Lightning Crossbow Pathfinder is a great option!

Are you often facing a currency shortage in the early stages of Path of Exile 2 0.4.0 league? Don't worry, because we're going to share a profitable money-making strategy to help you overcome this difficulty: essence farming. This strategy is quite easy to get started with; you only need to focus on killing many rare monsters, which almost any build can easily do.

Moreover, the advantage of this strategy is that you don't even need to invest a large amount of resources upfront, which is suitable for most players who lack funds in the early stages of the league. You can start with a very low cost and then gradually upgrade the strategy as the game progresses to suit different budgets and builds, easily earning over 30 Divine Orbs every day!

How Does It Work?

The core of this strategy is to farm as many Essences as possible in each map. This is mainly achieved by using Overseer Precursor Tablets, which guarantee extra Essence drops in each map. You might think these tablets are a bit expensive, but rest assured, Essence returns they provide are absolutely worth it.

One recommended setup is to use two double-Essence Precursor Tablets and one single-Essence Tablet. Because in addition to Overseer Precursor Tablet, other tablets can grant double Essences. Using a single-Essence Tablet allows you to add an Abyss Tablet, Breach Tablet, Delirium Tablet, or other strategies you want, thus obtaining some extra PoE 2 currency.

These tablets will be used on T15 maps with 6 modifiers. If you can't handle 6-modifier maps, you can use only 4-modifier maps, in which case you can only use two tablets. Once your build can handle it, you can upgrade to using three tablets simultaneously.

Map Setup

The map setup itself is very simple. You just need to collect some maps, put them in another tab, and then use an Orb of Alchemy to add at least 4 modifiers to each map. We can easily maintain a supply of T15 maps.

If you don't want to use 6-modifier maps, then this is all you need to do. If you want to use 6-mod maps, you'll need to use PoE 2 Exalted Orbs to add six mods to each map.

Selling High Rarity Mod Maps

Next, you need to quickly browse through all your maps and see if any have mods with 60% or higher rarity. These maps are worth approximately 10 Exalted Orbs each and can usually be sold immediately. If you're lucky and get maps with 80%-90% rarity, they're worth 25 to 30 Exalted Orbs each.

It's best to sell these maps to other players and keep the money as profit, or invest it in new maps.

Filtering Mods

After all of this, it's recommended that you use a filter to screen out maps with undesirable mods. The remaining maps will become the basis of your later map strategy.

As for your inventory setup, you'll need to bring some maps, and ideally a large number of Chaos Orbs, as we'll be using these orbs to corrupt Essences, thereby changing the results and gaining more profit from this strategy.

Atlas Skill Tree

Before we discuss how to do this in maps, let's look at what Atlas Skill Tree should look like for this strategy.

It's quite simple. We just need to go to the top and light up all the talents related to Precursor Tablets, which will make our map rewards more abundant. Also worth mentioning is Remnants of Power, as it has a 20% chance to double the number of Essences in the map, and investing in Ecological Shift will grant more additional total Essences.

Then, we go to the bottom right and fill all Essence-related talent nodes, and invest the remaining points into some Spirit nodes for some extra bonuses.

In addition, you need to make sure you invest at least three points in Map Boss Tree at the top, as this will give you extra Essences from Crystal Realm.

If you plan to use Abyss Tablets, you should make sure to light up Shadow of Undeath, as this will give you more Essence of the Abyss. The remaining nodes can be chosen based on your preference for different mechanics.

Collecting Essences

You'll have a lot of fun running these maps, as the balance changes brought by PoE patch 0.4.0 make farming Essences easier than ever before.

First, you need to walk along the walls and find the map boss as quickly as possible. After killing the map boss, all remaining mechanics in the map will light up. Therefore, you can easily find these Essences without checking every corner.

We only need to check Essence monsters to see if they possess one of the five high-value Essences:

• Perfect Essence of Sorcery
• Perfect Essence of Haste
• Perfect Essence of Battle
• Greater Essence of Ruin
• Greater Essence of Opulence

If it possesses any of these five essences, simply click on the monster and kill it to collect the loot. If it doesn't have these essences, you can simply use a Vaal Orb to transform it into a new essence. This will upgrade a Greater Essence to a Perfect Essence, or if the item already has a Perfect Essence, there's a chance to upgrade it to an Essence worth the equivalent of a POE 2 Divine Orb.

While you could theoretically make this farming process more complex, there's no point in doing so. Just keep an eye out for those five Essences, kill the monsters, collect the loot, and move on to the next map. As for route selection, you can do whatever you like.

Selling & Profits

Once you've completed some maps and accumulated a lot of Essences in your stash, let's talk about how to handle them.

To quickly sell these Essences, simply put them on the currency exchange. The problem is, unfortunately, many Essences are junk and basically nobody needs them.

So, before selling, you can check the current trading volume of Essences. Some options have high trading volume, while other Essences simply won't sell. Whether or not you try to sell these Essences is up to you.

Even so, Essences obtained using this strategy can earn you approximately four to five Divines per hour, and the income is relatively stable.

Overall, this Essence farming strategy feels very relaxed because you don't really need to think too much; you just clear the map, and you're guaranteed to get some profit every time. Of course, the hourly income will vary. So, choose a class like Pathfinder to start your farming journey, and this strategy definitely won't disappoint you!

Although Path of Exile 2 is complex and difficult to master, one of the main reasons it retains a loyal fanbase is its unique mechanics, unlike mainstream ARPGs, such as its detailed currency system.

Most ARPGs tend to have an economic system based on a specific currency or gold, serving as the basic means of exchange. However, Path of Exile 2 has many types of currency, each with different uses and acquisition methods.

While this increases the difficulty of currency farming, it also means your gaming experience will be clearer and more organized, rather than having a pile of coins without knowing what to do with them.

The economic system in PoE 2 resets with each new league. Therefore, now, a week after the start of Fate of the Vaal league, the popular Divine Orbs should be your farming priority.

Below, we will introduce the information you need to know to improve your Divine Orbs farming efficiency in this league.

Overview Of Divine Orb Farming Methods

Although PoE 2 has many types of currency, only a few are commonly used, and Divine Orbs are one of them. Their purpose is to increase the power of rare or unique items by changing their modifier values.

The effectiveness of these orbs is not obvious in the early stages of the league, so you can sell them for other currencies you need more. But as you progress further in the game, you will need to start farming them intensively.

Mapping

After entering the endgame stage, you can start earning various loot, including Divine Orbs, through mapping. The essence of the mapping mechanism is to constantly run new maps and fight in them to obtain rewards.

On this basis, Waystones and Precursor Tablets are two essential items. The former opens portals to random areas, and the latter increases the loot you ultimately receive by modifying the number and rarity of enemies.

Therefore, when farming Divine Orbs using this method, the key to improving efficiency is to obtain high-level Waystones while stacking Tablets, and also focusing on nodes that increase rewards when unlocking Atlas passive skills.

Trials And Events

Although the core function of Trial of Chaos and Trial of Sekhema is to help you unlock Ascendancy classes and talent points, they are also a mainstream way to obtain high-level currency, and you can farm them repeatedly.

Besides mapping and trials, when you play other endgame events, such as Ritual, Breach & Delirium, you can also encounter the sources of loot drops. Alternatively, if you urgently need currency, you can buy PoE 2 Divine Orbs through trading markets and websites.

Changes Introduced In Patch 0.4.0

In addition to adding new gameplay, each major update to Path of Exile 2 modifies or optimizes existing mechanics to ensure a smoother experience and better performance of the current patch content.

Based on the introduction to Divine Orb farming methods, you should already have a preliminary speculation of which changes will affect this. We will now explain them in detail.

Map Enemies And Bosses

When clearing maps, you will constantly encounter various towers. After the changes in Patch 0.3.1, their function is to clear the map fog after construction, revealing surrounding nodes and biomes, and guaranteeing a Precursor Tablet reward.

Building on this, if you are mapping during Fate of the Vaal league, the sources of increased enemy numbers on maps and Tablets have been removed, replaced by efficiency bonuses.

This means you will primarily obtain more loot by killing enemies with increased health, rather than by clearing a larger number of enemies. Regular monsters will no longer swarm the player in high density, while rare monsters will drop more loot.

In addition, each map now has a boss, some of which are more powerful - these bosses are marked separately and are more durable and deal higher damage.

If you are confident in your abilities, you can use an Overseer Precursor Tablet to transform the current map into one with a powerful map boss.

More importantly, after the release of Patch 0.4.0, killing the map boss will reveal all remaining unexplored content on the map, such as Breach hands, Abyss, and more.

Therefore, if you prioritize farming the boss when clearing maps, you can then more efficiently find all the content you want to complete, improving efficiency by filtering out mechanics with a lower probability of dropping Divine Orbs, avoiding wasted time.

However, if you die while fighting the map boss, all remaining content on the map will be removed.

Map Rolling

The map rolling mechanism has been significantly simplified, and no new mechanics that increase map setup time will be added in future updates.

Based on this, by combining it with an Orb of Alchemy that can roll Waystone modifiers, you can immediately give your map more affixes, thus obtaining more Divine Orbs or other loot upon completion.

Tablet Rolling

After optimization, by default, you can only have a maximum of two affixes on your map, but once you defeat the boss Arbiter of Ash in normal difficulty, you can reroll the map affixes to a maximum of four, including two prefixes and two suffixes.

Regarding Tablets, one affix you need to focus on is rarity. The rarity bonus of items dropped in the map stacks very well with the rarity bonus on your gear, thus improving the quality of all items you find in the map.

Optimal Farming Strategy

After understanding the above, to farm Divine Orbs faster in the new league, you first need to unlock the appropriate Atlas passive skills based on your class and build, and then focus on stacking map and gear rarity and killing rare monsters.

We hope our suggestions will help you earn more currency to upgrade your character in the later stages of Fate of the Vaal league. Have fun!