In the sprawling world of Path of Exile, building diversity reigns supreme. With a plethora of character customization options and a seemingly endless combination of skills, it can be challenging to determine what truly makes a good build. But there’s one unwritten rule that players often cite: the longer the name of a build, the better it is. Today, we’ll explore a build that surely lives up to this notion – the Strength and Intelligence Stacking Lowlife Energy Blade Spell (Blade Cast on Crit) Inquisitor. This intricate and powerful build is the culmination of extensive experimentation during Path of Exile’s 3.12 “Trial of the Ancestors” league.
The Strength and Intelligence Stacking Lowlife Energy Blade Spell Build, or “Energizer Blade,” as we’ll call it for brevity, is a unique and engaging playstyle that combines a variety of game mechanics to create a formidable character. The build’s core concept revolves around maximizing energy shield while leveraging spellcasting through the “Blade Cast on Crit” mechanic. In this article, we will delve deep into the key mechanics, the skill tree, gear, crafting, and gameplay aspects of this intriguing build.
Key Mechanics of the Energizer Blade Build
The Energizer Blade build harnesses several mechanics, making it a complex yet fascinating playstyle. To understand the build, you must first grasp these core elements:
Energy Shield Stacking: Path of Exile’s Energy Blade skill is central to this build. It grants flat lightning damage based on your maximum energy shield and reduces your total maximum energy shield by half. The build capitalizes on this flat damage to enhance spellcasting capabilities.
Spellcasting with Blade Cast on Crit: The “Blade Cast on Crit” mechanic is the foundation of the build’s damage output. It allows you to cast almost any spell when your character critically hits. This synergizes with the energy shield mechanics, creating a potent combination of offense and defense.
Attribute Stacking: A unique aspect of this build involves stacking both Strength and Intelligence attributes. These attributes impact various aspects of the character’s power, including life, energy shield, and damage. Key items like Ivory Tower and Shaper’s Touch are instrumental in maximizing the benefits of attribute stacking.
Shaper’s Touch and Ivory Tower: Shaper’s Touch gloves play a crucial role in this build, allowing for double-dipping increases to maximum energy shield via attribute stacking. Meanwhile, Ivory Tower converts life to energy shield while reserving life as mana, further enhancing the build’s damage and survivability.
Rathpith Globe: This unique shield is an essential part of the build, providing increased spell damage, which balances the build’s flat damage. The Rathpith Globe becomes the bridge between the flat damage and the spellcasting capabilities, which are amplified through the “Spell Blade” and “Battle Mage” mechanics.
Flesh and Flame Set: The build incorporates the expensive Flesh and Flame set, particularly “Forbidden Flesh” and “Forbidden Flame.” These items are paramount for managing mana and reserving life to energy shield conversion. They also provide increased flask charge gain rate and flask duration.
The Coruscating Elixir: This unique flask is crucial to maintaining 100% flask uptime for the Coruscating Elixir’s energy shield protection, especially against chaos damage.
These are the foundational mechanics behind the Energizer Blade build, and each plays a critical role in enhancing the character’s attributes and spellcasting abilities. By understanding and effectively utilizing these mechanics, players can harness the build’s true potential.
The Skill Tree and Talents of the Energizer Blade
The Energizer Blade builds a skill tree that is complex and revolves around key nodes and clusters that boost attributes, energy shields, spell damage, and critical strike chance. Let’s explore the skill tree’s structure and some of its critical components:
Attribute Stacking: The build’s skill tree encompasses Strength and Intelligence nodes strategically placed to maximize the scaling of attributes. This leads to significant gains in life, energy shield, and damage output.
Spellcasting Enhancements: Key nodes like “Spell Blade” and “Battle Mage” are instrumental in applying the massive flat damage from the energy shield to your spells, effectively double-dipping and maximizing spell damage.
Keystones: The build incorporates valuable keystones such as “Iron Will” for additional spell damage scaling, “Sanctuary of Thought” to mitigate mana costs and increase energy shield as a percentage of unreserved life, and “Agnostic” for life regeneration that benefits energy shield.
Ascendancy Choices: The Inquisitor ascendancy is selected for its significant benefits, including “Instruments of Virtue” and “Righteous Providence,” which boost damage, critical strike chance, and spell-casting speed. While “Inevitable Judgement” provides a consistent damage boost, players can explore “Sanctuary of Thought” in mapping scenarios for added defenses.
Gearing and Crafting for the Energizer Blade Build
Proper gear and crafting are pivotal to the success of the Energizer Blade build. Here are some key items and considerations for each gear slot:
Energy Blade (Weapon): You can use any melee weapon for this build. Craft it with a Hollow Fossil to add an Abyssal socket. The Abyssal socket can then be filled with jewels that provide life, energy shield, critical strike multiplier, and possibly reduced mana reservation or corrupted blood immunity.
Crown of Eyes Inward Eye (Helmet): Look for a Crown of Eyes Inward Eye with an “Energy Blades have Increased Attack Speed” enchantment. This enchantment significantly enhances your damage output. Optionally, you can choose a helmet that adds a 90% cost in reservation multiplier for socketed skill gems.
Rathpith Globe (Shield): Ideally, aim for a Rathpith Globe with a mod that converts physical damage taken as fire, cold, or lightning. Avoid the “Fizzy Taken as Chaos” mod unless you have exceptionally high chaos resistance.
Shaper’s Touch (Gloves): Shaper’s Touch gloves are essential to the build, as they grant an increased energy shield based on your attributes. To maximize the effectiveness of these gloves, obtain a pair with the “+1 to Level of Socketed Gems” modifier, which supports your auras.
The Stampede (Boots): The Stampede boots negate the movement speed reduction when using Cyclone, allowing you to maintain a steady pace. You can use Corrupted Insignia base boots for added defenses.
Amulet: An “Eyes of the Great Wolf” amulet is highly recommended. Look for attributes that grant increased attributes and global defenses. This synergizes well with the build’s focus on attribute stacking.
Chest Piece: Choose an Ivory Tower chest piece, preferably with the “+1 to Level of Socketed Gems” modifier. While increased damage is a desirable stat, it’s not mandatory. You can also craft your chest piece to include defensive modifiers through tailoring orbs or Watcher’s Eye mods.
Rare Ring: The build’s rare ring offers flexibility. Ideally, it should have attributes, life, energy shield, strength, intelligence, and resistance. Consider using an Essence of Spite or Essence of Rage to add desired attributes, depending on your requirements.
Belt: Crafting a belt that matches your specific attributes and defensive needs is essential. Start with a fractured base with either strength or intelligence, then craft attributes, life, increased life, and strength as needed. This process can yield a highly customized belt.
Jewels: For rare jewels, seek ones that offer increased life, increased energy shield, global critical strike multiplier, and critical strike multiplier with elemental skills. The right jewels significantly contribute to your damage output.
Optional Nubis Ring: If you plan to use Blazing Salvo or any spell that benefits from a Nubis ring, obtain one. These rings can improve your build’s performance.
A White Socket: If you intend to use spells other than Blazing Salvo, make sure your chest piece has a white socket to accommodate the Awakened GMP support gem. This is essential for maximizing the spell’s effectiveness.
This comprehensive list of gear and crafting recommendations is tailored to help you achieve the full potential of the Energizer Blade build. Keep in mind that crafting these items can be challenging and costly, so consider using MMOexp trade websites to find or buy POE currency that matches your requirements.
Gameplay and Strategy
The Energizer Blade build offers a unique and engaging gameplay experience. Here are some gameplay elements and strategies to consider when using this build:
One-Button Spinning: The primary gameplay revolves around Cyclone, which serves as your primary attack and movement skill. The build combines Cyclone with the Blade Cast on Crit mechanic, allowing you to unleash spells automatically when you critically hit enemies.
Map and Modifier Considerations: While the build can handle a wide range of maps and modifiers, be cautious about those that reduce flask charges gained or flask duration, as they can disrupt your Coruscating Elixir uptime. Ensuring 100% flask uptime is critical for your survival against chaos damage.
Adaptable Spell Choice: The Energizer Blade build offers versatility when it comes to spell selection. While Blazing Salvo is an excellent choice for clearing maps due to its high overlapping damage, you can also switch to other spells like Eye of Winter, Arc, or Fantasmal Ice Spear for boss encounters.
Bossing Capabilities: Despite not being the tankiest build, the Energizer Blade excels at boss fights. The build’s damage output is significant, allowing you to defeat Uber bosses with ease. Players report achieving quick Uber Elder and Uber Cortex kills with this build.
Beware of Flask-Stripping Ghosts: Some map modifiers introduce ghostly enemies that strip your flask charges. These modifiers can be dangerous if encountered in high-risk situations, so exercise caution and consider killing or avoiding such enemies.
Strategy for Coruscating Elixir: Ensure that your Coruscating Elixir is up 100% of the time to protect yourself against chaos damage. Utilize the Coruscating Elixir while mapping and against bosses for added protection.
Overlap for Maximum Damage: If using Blazing Salvo, strive to maximize the number of projectile overlaps, as this significantly increases your damage output. The Nubis ring can further enhance this aspect.
Overall, the Energizer Blade build offers an engaging and powerful gameplay experience, combining spellcasting and melee skills to become a versatile and effective character. While it may not be the tankiest build, it excels at boss encounters and provides an adaptable playstyle that can clear maps with ease.
In Conclusion
The Energizer Blade build, born from the creative and experimental minds of Path of Exile players, demonstrates the fascinating complexity and possibilities within the game. Its unique mechanics, from attribute stacking to spell casting with Blade Cast on Crit, create a powerful and dynamic character that can face formidable challenges with confidence.
While crafting and optimizing gear for the build may require substantial resources, the results are well worth the investment. The Energizer Blade offers an engaging and adaptable playstyle, making it an excellent choice for those who seek both effective mapping and boss-killing capabilities.
The ever-evolving world of Path of Exile is bound to introduce new builds and mechanics, but the Energizer Blade build is a testament to the creativity and ingenuity of the game’s community. Whether you choose to embark on this journey or explore other build options, the world of Wraeclast continues to offer new adventures and challenges for players to conquer.
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