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PoE 3.25 Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden Build

07.11.2024 - 02:11:18
Game Guides , Path of Exile

One of the best things that happened to Path of Exile is that GGG replaced the least-used ascendancy class, the Raider, with arguably a far better alternative called the Warden in Patch 3.25.

This new ascendancy class does have the same character portrait as the one it replaced. But make no mistake, the Warden comes with a bunch of new notable passive skills that make it the quintessential choice for elemental damage builds in PoE.

Having said that, we are excited to share with you a fast mapper that deals crazy amounts of cold, fire, and lightning damage. Without further ado, we present to you the Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden!

Why Choose the Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden?

For several leagues, bow builds have been dominated by only two skills: Tornado Shot and Lightning Arrow. Only with the release of Transfigured Gems did another contender enter the space. Of course, we are referring to the PoE Elemental Hit of the Spectrum.

This Transfigured Gem deals all the elemental damage types per use, including fire, cold, and lightning. The skill itself is no longer influenced by Combat Focus jewels, so it is best to improve elemental damage through your gear choices.

On top of that, it is capable of dealing 10% more damage for each type of elemental ailment you have inflicted on the enemy. Additionally, raising the quality of the skill gem gives 5% more damage!

When you follow our PoE Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden build to the tee, you can inflict five different elemental ailments, such as Chill, Freeze, Shock, Ignite, and Scorch. This translates to a whopping 50% more damage with each attack!

What we really like about this is the build’s flexibility when it comes to the choice of skills. Although we recommend Storm Rain, you could certainly use the Artillery Ballista setup to boost your single-target damage.

This PoE Warden build has plenty of upgrade options later down the line. However, it is worth mentioning that because of the popularity of bow builds in the Settlers of Kalguur League, the endgame gear requires a boatload of PoE 3.25 Currency. There is an incentive to purchase better items, though, because each upgrade truly feels like a worthy investment.

Now, the big question here is how does the Warden factor into all of this? Well, because you are using the transfigured version of Elemental Hit that deals all three elemental damage types, you take all the nodes that improve fire, cold, and lightning damage.

Oath of Winter acts as a defensive layer because it freezes enemies consistently. What’s more, if you fail to freeze the target, that specific enemy is affected by “Hoarfrost” which increases freeze duration by 20% per stack.

Oath of Spring changes the elemental ailment, Shock, in a better way, especially if you can hit monsters quickly. Basically, Shock now only makes enemies take 2% increased damage. However, this effect is amplified because Shock can now stack up to 50 times on a single monster, which amounts to 100%!

Oath of Summer is pretty interesting. First of all, whenever you hit an enemy, it would typically inflict the fire elemental ailment, Ignite, which would deal damage over time. But with this notable ascendancy passive skill, you inflict Scorch instead. Enemies you have scorched have their resistance to elemental damage lowered by up to 30%.

Wait, if you are inflicting Scorch, how can you apply Ignite on an enemy then? Good question! That is actually possible by leveraging Mirror Arrow of Bombarding Clones linked to Combustion Support.

Finally, the Warden gives you access to Avatar of the Wilds. This ascendancy node grants a new buff called Unbound Avatar. When used, this skill provides 80% more elemental damage and ensures that all of your attacks can inflict Freeze, Shock, and Ignite (Scorch if you have Oath of Summer).

With all of that combined, you have one of the best PoE builds for mapping in the SoK League!

Take the notable ascendancy passive skills mentioned in this order:

Oath of Winter
Oath of Summer
Avatar of the Wilds
Oath of Spring

This build requires you to have a change in mindset, especially in the way you approach things. If you relied on guard skills and the usual defensive layers like armor and evasion for a long time, the best way to survive on this build is to just kill enemies before they hit you. As a result, the perfect modifiers to look for on your gear are ones that can improve your damage, such as:

Added Fire/Cold/Lightning Damage
Increased Elemental Damage
+ to Critical Strike Multiplier
Increased Attack Speed
Increased Critical Strike Chance
Elemental Penetration
Chance to Deal Double Damage

Playstyle

If you are not into complicated playstyles, we are happy to say that even the best Elemental Hit build in PoE 3.25 is easy to use. You just run around the map in search of monsters and then hit them with a single cast of your primary skill.

Now, the playstyle changes a little bit depending on whether you utilize Artillery Ballista or not. If you do use this skill, drop a few ballistae on the ground whenever you need help in the damage department.

Once Unbound Avatar is available, simply use the skill to gain a significant boost to your elemental damage.

Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden Gear Recommendations

Capping elemental resistances to 75% is a must if you want to run maps without fear of dying. Chaos resistance is admittedly hard to come by with the pieces of gear you’re going to wear on this build. However, even if you cannot reach 75%, at least having positive chaos resistance is better for your survivability.

In addition, while you can play this build during league start, we do recommend the use of some unique items. Upgrade to these things early on and everything will be smooth sailing!

If you need more Divine Orbs to enhance the capabilities of this build, our PoE Storeis open to serve you!

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Weapon

Among the PoE Elemental Damage builds, this one perfectly encapsulates the need for a weapon with three elements. Being able to deal fire, cold, and lightning damage enables you to inflict the typical elemental ailments in the game, including Ignite, Chill, Freeze, and Shock, respectively. For this reason, you need to craft a tri-element bow.

Early on, you can craft a relatively affordable bow using the Shrieking Essence of Wrath. This guarantees the lightning damage prefix on your weapon. Spam an ilvl 82+ Spine Bow with the said essence until you get T2 (or even T1) added fire and added cold damage.

If you have enough PoE Currency, you can put the metamod “Prefixes Cannot Be Changed” and then use Harvest Reforge Critical to force a crit mod. Bench-craft attack speed and you should be good!

Crafted_Spine_Bow_with_T2_added_fire_and_cold_damage

Once you have enough Divine Orbs, purchase a synthesized Spine Bow with attack speed or critical strike multiplier as the implicit mods. Do the same process of crafting as mentioned above, though you should aim for all T1 mods since this is going to be the weapon you use until the end of the league.

To get the two additional arrows, the Spine Bow must have an item level of 86 and above. This goes for the synthesized base as well.

In Patch 3.25, you could use the Runesmithing Table in Kingsmarch to add another useful modifier to your weapon. For this build, specifically, we recommend some added lightning damage or "Gain Onslaught after spending a total of 200 Mana.” The latter is useful if you intend to kill the game’s uber bosses with this PoE Elemental Hit build.

Runesmithing_Table_Spine_Bow_with_lightning_damage_mod

Quiver

The Broadhead Arrow Quiver serves as the best crafting base for this build due to its attack speed implicit. Other good choices include the Spike-Point Arrow Quiver (Crit Chance) and Feathered Arrow Quiver (Projectile Speed).

Anyway, get your hands on a bunch of Essence of Torment (Lightning Damage to Attacks). Utilize this as much as you can and stop only when you have bow attacks fire an additional arrow and global critical strike multiplier. Bench-craft attack speed, and that’s it!

If you really want to min-max your quiver, buy a base with the additional arrow mod already fractured. Use Essence of Torment until you get life and global crit multi. This process may populate the rest of the mod slots, so use an Orb of Annulment to remove the unwanted suffix.

When you have an open suffix, craft “Cannot Roll Attack Modifiers” and pop an Exalted Orb. This guarantees increased damage with bow skills, so hope that it comes out as a Tier 1 mod for maximum benefit.

Body Armor

Hyrri’s Ire is your go-to body armor for the Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden. This item adds up to 200 flat cold damage with every attack, making you a sniper who is not to be trifled with. The huge increase in spell suppression that this unique item provides alleviates some constraints when it comes to your other pieces of gear.

Helmet

The Fledgling has seen a huge rise in usage rate in PoE 3.25. This is primarily due to Far Shot, which grants 60% more damage to enemies that are further away from you.

Just so you know, the condition for the unique effect to work is always satisfied because of Returning Projectiles Support. This support gem ensures that the projectiles you’ve unleashed will only come back to you when they have reached their maximum travel distance.

Because of your ability to freeze enemies consistently, you can go for the Heatshiver to provide additional damage. The only reason why we favor The Fledgling more than this one is that there is no complicated mechanic that needs to be fulfilled in order to gain the advantage.

Gloves

Painseeker is an often neglected PoE unique item that should be a lot more popular than it is, in our opinion. Not only does this add more fire, cold, and lightning damage, but it also allows you to inflict elemental ailments more consistently despite not having a huge critical strike chance. If your current crit rate is less than 50%, the Painseeker will make this build feel a lot smoother to play!

Ultimately, you will switch to a pair of gloves that have the Alva Temple Mod: “35-50% Increased Damage with Hits Against Chilled Enemies.” This single modifier provides a huge damage boost, so why not take advantage of it?

Although this is optional, we highly encourage the use of enough PoE Orbs to achieve “Gain 2 Rage on Attack Hit.” Since you are very fast in attacking monsters, you can easily get 30% more damage from Rage when you are able to elevate the aforementioned mod to at least T2.

Boots

Satisfying the attribute requirements of your gems and gear can be a challenging endeavor a couple of weeks into a new league. That is why the Lioneye’s Paws are quite good since these boots grant up to 60 Strength and Dexterity.

While the attributes this unique item provides are welcome, the main reason for using it is to apply constant pressure on your enemies thanks to the mod: “Trigger Level 5 Rain of Arrows When You Attack.” The added fire damage coupled with that 20% increased movement speed should aid you at the beginning of your mapping experience.

Once you transition to the endgame version of the PoE Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden build, you will more than likely have a good amount of critical strike chance. Why not harness that and wear boots that grant Elusive when you land a critical hit?

You can have boots with a few useful influenced modifiers, such as Elusive, Onslaught, and Tailwind. The process of crafting them is quite lengthy, but you can refer to our crafting guide for the full instructions.

Amulet

Another under-utilized unique item in Path of Exile, The Halcyon doubles down on Oath of Winter's effect, where it increases freeze duration on monsters. More importantly, this unique amulet has a profound impact on your damage, granting a 60% boost if you have frozen an enemy in the past several seconds.

The Halcyon does have its practical uses, but we believe that Hyrri's Truth is a better option in the late game. This lets you activate level 30 Precision, which greatly enhances your accuracy rating. However, the main selling point of Hyrri’s Truth is that it has a culling effect that instantly slays monsters if they are below 20% of their maximum HP.

Whatever amulet you choose, spend a Vaal Orb in the hopes of getting the corrupted implicit: “You Can Apply an Additional Curse.” When the process is successful, anoint Defiled Forces (Crimson, Black, and Opalescent Oils) on it. This notable passive skill refreshes the duration of elemental ailments on your foes when casting a curse on them.

On the other hand, if you do not have the corrupted implicit modifier, you could just anoint your preferred amulet with Whispers of Doom (3x Golden Oils) to achieve the same effect.

Rings

When you are still gearing up your PoE Warden build, get an ilvl 85+ ring and use Essence of Scorn (Global Crit Multi) until you get some resistance, life, and increased elemental damage with attacks. Make sure to put the non-channeling mod on there to reduce the mana cost of your skills.

Essence_of_Scorn_ring_with_mods_for_PoE_build

The Taming is an absolute beast in terms of the value it brings to the table. If you are wondering why that is, this item boosts your damage for each type of elemental ailment on the enemy. As you can see, this is similar to Elemental Hit of the Spectrum’s innate property, which means that wearing this particular ring just amplifies it even further.

While wearing two “The Taming” rings is certainly an option, you should replace one of them with the Nimis when you have the means to do so. Equipping the Nimis would enable you to replace Returning Projectiles Support with another support gem for a more enhanced damage output, such as Increased Critical Damage or Hypothermia.

Belt

The Elemental Hit of the Spectrum Warden is a league starter. As such, you could have your character wear a crafted Stygian Vise at the beginning of your journey in Path of Exile. Since INT can be challenging to obtain given that you wear multiple unique items, you can craft a Stygian Vise using Essence of Spite. Do this until you get helpful modifiers, including life, mana, and chaos resistance.

In case you are new to the game, the Stygian Vise allows you to insert an abyss jewel into it. That said, look for these modifiers when shopping for these jewels on PoE Trade:

Adds # to # fire/cold/lightning damage to attacks
+% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier
+ to Maximum Life

Do you want to unleash the true power of this PoE build? If so, there is no better belt than the Headhunter! HH, as the community calls it, works well with the theme of the build. The fact that you hit fast, hard, and quickly here grants modifiers that will help you obliterate even the toughest content in the game!

Flasks

Diamond Flask
Quicksilver Flask
Jade Flask
Dying Sun
Life Flask or Progenesis

Flask Mods

55% Increased Critical Strike Chance (of Incision)
14% Increased Movement Speed (of the Cheetah)
60% Increased Evasion Rating (of the Impala)
Immunity to Corrupted Blood (Life Flask)
Surgeon’s (prefix, 32-34% Chance to Gain a Flask Charge on Critical Strike)

Jewels

Start by investing in Watcher’s Eye with any of the following mods:

Precision
- Increased Attack Speed
- + to Critical Strike Multiplier
- Gain a Flask Charge When You Deal Critical Strike
Anger
- +% to Critical Strike Multiplier
- Damage Penetrates % Fire Resistance
Purity of Elements
- +% to Chaos Resistance
- % of Physical Damage from Hits Taken as Fire/Cold/Lightning Damage

When it comes to Timeless Jewels, the Brutal Restraint offers more benefits than the Lethal Pride. This unique jewel boosts projectile damage, attack speed, and critical strike chance — modifiers that work well for the build.

Now, you are going to make some tough choices here because you only have a limited number of passive skill points to allocate. To save some points, invest in a massive Thread of Hope and place it in the jewel socket just above “Charisma.”

For the absolute best results, get the Forbidden Flesh and Forbidden Flame jewel with “Fury of Nature” as the matching modifier. This node enhances the effect of your non-damaging ailments by 100%. Besides that, these ailments will spread to nearby enemies in a much larger radius compared to other items with a similar effect.

Tattoos

Tattoo of the Tasalio Scout
- 4% Increased Effect of Your Marks
Tattoo of the Ramako Fleetfoot
- 2% Increased Movement Speed
Tattoo of the Tasalio Tideshifter
- 10% Chance to Avoid Being Stunned
Tattoo of the Ramako Shaman
- +2% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage

Skill Gems Setup