Gemling Avatar of Fire / Giant's Blood shockwave totem
Hello,
I wanted to share a build idea I have.
Going to try it out soon. It is a theory, and has not been tested - apart from a quick test that SWT/AoF actually makes the SWT deal fire damage.
The build idea was born when I aug-regaled a low-attribute 2h weapon with +4 skill and 74% Elemental Damage With Attacks (short: EDWA). This is one of the few global stats available on the 2h maces.
example weapon for dual-wielding with Titan's grip
After 2 artificer's orbs and 2 soul cores (currently 1ex each, hopefully won't get expensive after this post!) it will go up to 134%EDWA.
Now on https://www.youtube.com/@Zizaran 's channel, there's a basic SWT guide/diary for Warrior, which revolves around breaking armor and physical damage. He mentioned around mintue 7 of the video, where he realized this could be a possible path to take, and I am expanding on that idea.
There's the basic 105 point tree https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/n72e903c
(we may choose to get more duration, some mana cost reduction, regen etc, on top, or instead of some damage - depending on how it plays)
- Ascend as Gemling Legionnaire, for doubling the inherent STR bonus (flat life enjoyer), and solving attribute problems
- navigate straight to warrior side of the tree, and get to totem nodes, then around level 50-60, Avatar of Fire and Giant's Blood
- wear 2x +4(or higher) melee skill two-handers, that also have a EDWA mod
- socket them both with 2 artificers' orb and use a total of 4x Soul Core of Citaqualotl, for an extra 120% EDWA on top
- these two weapons should provide ~300%-400% EDWA at around level 50, which should possibly more than compensate for the 25% less dmg penalty, coming from Avatar of Fire non-full damage conversion (75% of damage to fire)
- we're swapping armor breaking mechanic from classic warrior physical shockwave totem, for the possibility of damage penetration; there's some great elemental based supports you can use, like Fire Pen. and also lots of other supports that can be considered now multipliers without downsides: Fire Infusion, Elemental Focus
- because we're gemling legionnaire, we get access to things like Blasphemy Flammability, which we otherwise could not have - because of attribute requirements. Self cast flammability could also work, but it's one more button press.
- because we're gemling legionnaire, we may also try looking into loop setups on the side (Cast on Minion Death -> Flame wall, Summon raging spirit + infernal legion, is the most basic easily accesible and gem-based only loop; maybe the flame wall ignite, or the SRS could do Fire exposure? IDK, to be explored)
- in late game, we might choose to remove some of the 30%EDWA sockets in favor of +15 spirit ones from Trial. They are probably hard to get and definitely expensive now (multiple exalts for one).
- in late game, we may choose to ascend for reduced mana cost of skills, at the expense of attrib. requirements which we would easily solve either way considering we go for Giant's blood.
Comments
I can see that SRS / ignite loop is now getting nerfed. Oh well; we might use the other totem with +1 limit like Zizaran did to apply exposure then.
Did you confirm that edwa on weapons apply to the totems?
Many other stats on the weapon don't apply, but those are also local modifiers. But your totems are using their own weapon so I would probably confirm that edwa on weapons is carried over to the totems.
Also with gemling you really want Crystalline Potential. SWT scales crazy good with quality, since quality lowers its base attack time
mana costs will be an issue before you even get to late game with two +4 weapons
make sure to combo with earthquake or volcanic fissure which add a secondary hit for SWT
wish astral projection worked with SWT :(