Slayer ascendancy was really strong in 3.0. The changes to Vaal Pact in 3.1 made this ascendancy even more desirable for endgame due to its high sustainability and "over leech". The build is almost completely immune to stun and bleed . The build also has easy access to many of the best life passive nodes on the tree as well as all the damage nodes it could ever need to tackle end game with proper scaling from gear. A perfect starter build that can evolve into an endgame beast.
I chose to go Blood Magic, since I'm running Starforge wich doesn't allow us to deal elemental damage therefore there is no need for heralds or auras. There is also a juicy life cluster behind it.
CORE UNIQUE ITEMS
The only core unique is Starforge, this is where we put our cyclone setup that wont be able to deal elemental damage but it allows our physical damage to shock. We can stack some "chance to shock" on the jewels ( about 10 -20% should suffice, depending on your attack speed ). For a budget version of the build, we want a good high physical dps Two-Handed axe or sword, "chance to shock" is not needed in that case. I would recommend going for an axe and taking axe damage node clusters instead of the sword ones.
If you wont be running Starforge, you can exclude Blood Magic, grab some mana leech near the duellist area and run Herald of Ash and Hatred as your mana reservations for more damage and clear speed.
OTHER UNIQUE ITEMS TO CONSIDER
I personally use Kaom's Heart but it's completely unnecessary and even questionable since running a 5l or 6l chest gives us extra links to work with for our Ancestral Warchief Totem. With Kaom's Heart I run my totem setup in one of the 4 links. If you have it, Belly of the Beast is also a great choice. For boots we want movement speed, life and resistances. Gloves; life, resistances and for our rings ideally we want two steel rings with decent flat phys rolls. We can do this by crafting our steel rings with Deafening Essence of Contempt. Alternatively use your rings slots to fill out missing resistances and stats, more life ...
For our jewels the stats priority would be something like this:
% increased life, % increased physical damage ( overall, with swords, two-handed swords, two handed weapons ), %increased area damage, %increased attack speed and lastly resistances that you might be missing from the rest of your gear
LINKS
Starforge 5/6l:
Cyclone, Melee Physical Damage Support, Maim, Brutality, Damage on Full Life Support/ + Increased Area of Effect support for maps and Concentrated Effect for bosses.
4l:
Leap Slam, Faster Attacks Support, Ancestral Warchief, Fortify
4l:
Blood Rage, Vaal Haste, Increased Duration/ + Vaal Grace or Portal; really doesn't matter.
4l:
Cast When Damage Taken ( lvl. 5 ), Immortal Call ( lvl. 7 ), Summon Flame Golem ( lvl. 7 ), Increased Duration ( lvl. 20 )
If you are using a Belly of The Beast or a rare 5/6l chest:
Ancestral Warchief, Melee Physical Damage, Brutality, Maim, Faster Attacks/ + Concentrated Effect. This can be a great secondary source of damage.
FLASKS
For flasks I went with Chemist's Silver Flask of Warding,
Lion's Roar,
Blood of the Karui, Chemist's Quicksliver Flask of Adrenaline and Chemist's Basalt Flask of Heat.
We do not need bleed removal, only utility flasks "of heat" and "of warding" for freeze and curse removal and immunity.
PROS and CONS
PROS
Safe, great for bosses, great sustain, good single target damage, viable for all content with modest investment into gear
CONS
Not the fastest map clearing build
CONCLUSION and TOOLTIPS
This was the breakout build for me, it got me trough endgame and was the first build that I killed guardians on a 5 link setup. ( shaper incoming, I haven't played that much lately ) I will consider uploading each guardian kill on DTube.
I went for something like this since my actual "active play style" skills suck. So if you re worried about that, don't be. You spin, use flasks, and win.
Here are the character's offensive and defensive sheets:
As you can see the defences are not overly impressive, however we make up for that by keeping up our Fortify with Leap Slam, using our Lion's Roar and Basalt flasks and by being a high life pool slayer with our high leech and over leech. It is always best to go for multiple layers of defence, instead of relying on a single one. We could add another layer of defence by including Enduring Cry into our setup, that is entirely up to you. This build leaves a lot of room to manoeuvre, so you can adapt it towards your own play style.
I know this guide wasn't the most in depth guide, more of an overview, but I hope it helped you build your first endgame character in PoE. The game can be quite overwhelming at first and it's easy to get lost, especially on the passive tree. Many builds fail early and most of the new players struggle when making a build that can reliably earn them currency or item drops. If you re new to the game, I hope this helps a bit. If you re a veteran, please add your insight in the comments below. Share your "tips and tricks"!
I have two other builds nearly ready to be reviewed. If you would like to see more PoE content on Steemit and DTube please show your support by up voting and following. Also feel free to add me in game, I love doing group map runs on my "magic find" character. Keep in mind that I play mostly on standard.
@elythies
Oh man, great to find PoE content on Steemit! I'm not playing at the moment (doing more of a backlog reduction thing than replaying favorites), but I still like to keep an eye on the meta for if and when I decide to jump back in.
The game is pretty interesting in "War for the Atlas" expansion, and we've got an entire Ascendancy rework coming up next. I'm eager to see what GGG pulls out of their hat. And its a perfect time for new players as well as returning vets, with all the quality of life improvements they've made. You'll be seeing allot more PoE content from me on Steemit :) !