PoE 3.25 Sunder Build

1. Build introduction
2. Build Mechanics
3. Ascendancy, Pantheon and Bandits
4. Gems
5. Leveling + Passive Skill tree
6. Items
7. FAQ
8. Endgame expensive stuff
9. How to Play

Build introduction

Welcome to the Affliction Version of this Sunder Guide!

This guide has been established in Harbinger League and is a well known and played guide for everyone from total noob up to big pros and always managed to tackle all gamecontent with enough investment of time/currency.

The core guide is aimed at new players and league start, so it won't contain any unobtainable or extremely expensive gear. We will go through endgame possibilities later in this guide too. Everything you need is very able to be farmed by yourself. So SSF is a fully viable option here.

Pros:

• Dirty cheap to start with and map to farm currency for other characters
• No exclusive gear needed
• Resolute Technique Build - No Crit or Accuracy needed
• Versatile! Can easily be modded to suit different playstyles

Cons:

• Not your standard meta build that does quadzillions of damage and facetanks everything
• You have to play bosses the way they were meant to be
• Can not run physical reflect maps
• Tired of endless grinding? Buy POE Currency from Rpgstash.com
  

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Build Mechanics

This build is built upon the usage of 2 skills.

1. Sunder

You slam your weapon into the ground and it creates a dirtwave that pierces through all enemies and creates a small extra AoE on each hit. This makes clearing large mobs easy.

2. Ancestral Warchief and Vaal Ancestral Warchief

This is from our Vaal Gem. The Ancestral Warchief is a totem skill that will use your melee weapon(s) to smash enemies near it. While standing near the totem you will gain extra damage. The Vaal Version, which we use on bosses, incursions, monoliths and other hard encounters, will also jump to enemies if it is out of reach.

On top of this, we use some secondary features.

1. Bleed

While our bleed does not do any huge damage it has a few boni that we definitely do not want to miss. First is that while the enemy is bleeding, they won't recover energy shields and will recover less HP as they constantly lose HP. Also, thanks to the tree, we will do more damage to any enemy that is bleeding. Also our (Vaal) Ancestral Warchief does almost double damage while the enemy is bleeding thanks to the Bloodlust Gem.

2. Overleech

We will have a lot of Life Leech which does not stop when we are full. So if you get a hit, you will regain your life very fast.

The rest of our skills are only support, defense layers and movement.

Ascendancy, Pantheon and Bandits

Since we want to utilize the bleed explosions, we will have to go Slayer.

Impact > Endless Hunger > Brutal Frevor > Headsman

The Pantheon is completely something of taste and totally depends on what you are doing and what gear you have. As rule of thumb you can always use Soul of Lunaris for mapping and Soul of Solaris when doing bosses or Soul of Brine King if you opt out of using Kaom's Roots. Also remember to upgrade the gods you are using as those upgrades give you a HUGE portion of defensive layers.

The Bandits are an easy takeon: Kill them all

Gems

The gems are always in order of importance

Our main attack Sunder: Sunder > Concentrated Effect > Maim > Melee Physical Damage > Fortify > Ruthless

Our main support Vaal Ancestral Warchief: Vaal Ancestral Warchief > Melee Physical Damage > Bloodlust > Concentrated Effect

Our movement skill: Leap Slam > Faster Attacks > Blood Magic > Culling Strike

Our Cast when Damage Taken setup: Cast when Damage Taken > Steelskin > Immortal Call

Remember to setup your CwdT Setup to your needs and life pool. For most players having CwdT 10 > Steelskin 15 > Immortal Call 12 would fit best

Our Auras: Pride > Blood and Sand > Arctic Armour

Leveling + Passive Skill tree

First Tree

We instantly rush for Resolute Technique as this is our way of dealing damage without the need for crits or accuracy, which makes gearing a lot easier. Just a straight way. Until you finish this part of the tree, you can play with whatever weapon you want that supports Sunder. Until level 12 just use Ground Slam with a Two-Handed weapon.

Second Tree

We now definitely switch to axes and take the Axe wheel. Finish the rest of this part of the tree as you need stuff. You might wanna go for the mana leech node soon after the Axe Wheel.

Third Tree (Final) We are now finalizing our tree. You will want to boost your Fortify and take the Life Wheel first. Also note that we relocate a few minor nodes from our first two trees. The two nodes before Warrior's Blood are being taken out as they are not needed anymore when we complete the connection on the outer ring.

As said, before level 12 and entering Merveil's Cavern you will want to use Ground Slam. You can link it to whatever you have colors and links for. Added Fire, Cold or Lightning are all fine. Maim is one of the most important Gems, too.

As soon as you are level 12 and are in Merveil's Cavern or get yourself a Sunder gem, you should switch to our Sunder setup. If you have more links than currently available support gems, just smash in whatever raises the damage. It really does not matter that early ingame.

Until Act 4 you won't need more than a 3 Link for your Sunder and (Vaal) Ancestral Warchief. Act 4 - Act 9 a 4 Link is fully viable. Even until Tier 2-5 maps you won't NEED a 5+ Link. Remember that the more links you have, the more mana stuff costs.

At around Tier 2-3 you should start to save up for a 5 Link chest that you mostly can get for ~10 Chaos which are easily farmed. A 6 link is not needed before doing very high tier maps. Do not waste your currency just to have 6 links but bad stats.

Pastebin for the full build: https://pastebin.com/EekrrYMv

Please keep in mind: The Items you see here are, on purpose, items from the harbinger league. This is too show you, how bad the items can be, to dish out enough damage to do all content ingame. To refer to items, please look at the next section and crafting.

Items

Get your gear quickly by buying POE Currency and Exalted Orbs

Our core gear (High cost engame gear has its own section) is mostly just rare gear with a few unique options.

We want two rare One-Handed axes.

Try to aim for 370pdps axes. That is still cheap.

We want increased Physical Damage, flat Physical Damage and Attack Speed on our weapons. If you can get some Physical Damage as extra Chaos Damage, take it.

Optional Uniques: Jack, the Axe; Soul Taker

We also want a rare Armour Helmet. Here you want as much life as possible and resistances Optional: Reduced enemy physical resistance and Socketed Gems are Supported by Level # Increased Area of Effect (Shaper) or Concentrated Effect (Elder). If you get one of them, you socket your Warchief here and exchange your Concentrated Effect to Ruthless.

Optional Uniques: Starkonja's Head, Devoto's Devotion, Abyssus

Also we want a rare Armour Chest Armour. Here you want to have as much life as possible too. Flat Life, % Life, Armour + Flat Life and resistances.

Optional Uniques: Belly of the Beast, Carcass Jack, Loreweave, Saqawal's Nest Next

We need some rare Armour Gloves. Best would be some Spiked Gloves as a base, as they give already Melee Damage as implicit. As mods on these we want (you probably guessed it already) LIFE, Attack Speed and resistances.

Optional Uniques: Veruso's Battering Rams, Offering to the Serpent

Our Armour Boots are undisputed: Kaom's Roots! Nothing is better for this slot. If you are desperate for movement speed and don't want to be immune everything (except black tar) that slows, stuns or freezes you, you can also take 30% - 35% Movement Speed Armour Boots with Life on them.

Our Belt is a Stygian Vise with Flat Life and Resistances. Increased Flask Duration is a nice bonus.

Optional Uniques: Ryslatha's Coil, Belt of the Deceiver Our Amulet is an Onyx Amulet, Lapis Amulet or a Turquoise Amulet with at least 30 Dexterity and as much INT as possible. Else we want Life on it. Attack Speed, Physical Damage to Attacks, % increased Armour would be nice too.

Our Rings are our main sources for Resistances and flat life and Intelligence. We need 87 Intelligence from Rings and our Amulet or 90 if you want to use a level 21 Concentrated Effect. Physical Damage to Attacks, Life gain on hit and Attack Speed are very helpful too.

Flask Setup:

We want one Catalysed Eternal Life Flask of Staunching to be immune to bleeding and to heal ourselfs. The rest are Support Flasks. Helpful are Rumi's Concoction, Cinderswallow Urn (Liferegeneration Craft), Taste of Hate and Atziris Promise. If any of these unique flasks are too expensive you can also use Basalt, Sulphur, Granite, Quartz or Quicksilver Flasks. Mod them so you have increased duration and Freeze and Curse Immunity on them. The rest whatever you like.

FAQ

Can I play as Champion or Gladiator?

Of course. This build is extremely versatile. It is very viable on all ascendancies and just switching the Ascendancy with the right choices.

Champion: Conqueror > Master of Metal > First to Strike, Last to Fall > Unstoppable Hero To make the Champion Ascendancy work good, you will have to respecc your tree a bit to include the Impale Nodes as those give you a lot of damage. And you will have to take some gear with impale bonuses too.

Gladiator: Blood in the Eyes > Gratious Violence > Outmatch and Outlast > Arena Challenger This was the original Version of this build but over time, Slayer has become mega superior in all cases, but a bit of clear speed.

Endgame expensive stuff

Okay, you have your core gear ready and farmed some Exalted Orbs and tackled all maps and want to bring this build up to be a Boss Killer too? No problem. Now it has come. The time to waste your currency is here. Please understand that this is a character guide, so I won't go into detail about crafting items, as this would kill the size of this guide.

For all crafts we never use anything below Item Level 86!

Let us start with our weapons. As the most damage depends on our weapons, we will make sure to have these ready first.

We're getting ourselves an Elder Runic Hatchet and use single Resonators with a Perfect Fossil until we have a 30% Runic Hatchet.

Now we craft: Prefixes

Tier 1: #% increased Physical Damage

Tier 1: Adds # to # Physical Damage

Tier 1: #% increased Physical Damage - +# to Accuracy Rating (Hybrid)

Suffixes

Tier 1: #% increased Attack Speed

Tier 1: #% increased Physical Weapon Damage while Dual Wielding

Tier 1: #% increased Physical Damage - Hits with this Weapon have Culling Strike against Bleeding Enemies

If you would max roll all these mods you would end up with a 743 Physical DPS Weapon and you want two of these. This is the best possible weapon you can craft and will cost you not only Exalted Orbs in masses, but also nerves of steel.

As you can see, if you want a weapon for a physical based character, you can go quite extreme. But there are other good mods to have an eye on:

Prefixes

#% Increased Physical Damage /

# to Accuracy Rating (Hybrid)

#% Increased Physical Damage * Shaper

#% increased Physical Damage / Socketed Gems are Supported by Level

# Added Fire Damage (Hybrid) Gain

#% of Physical Damage as Extra (Fire/Cold) Damage * Elder

#% increased Physical Damage Socketed Gems are Supported by Level

# (Melee Physical Damage / Ruthless) * Redeemer Gain

#% of Physical Damage as Extra Cold Damage * The Warlord

#% increased Physical Damage

#% increased Attack Speed * Crafting Bench Gain (7-8)% of Fire Damage as Extra Chaos Damage

Suffixes

#% increased Attack Speed

#Life gained for each Enemy hit by Attacks * Shaper % increased Attack Speed / Socketed Gems are Supported by Level

# Faster Attacks (Hybrid) * Elder Hits with this Weapon have Culling Strike against Bleeding Enemies /#% increased Physical Damage (Hybrid) * The Warlord

#% chance to Maim on Hit / #% increased Physical Damage (Hybrid)

#% increased Physical Weapon Damage while Dual Wielding

Any combinations of these will boost your damage by good amount

The other slots are not that extreme in their possibilities and should be easier to craft.

The Chest

Here all we want is Life. So we want either an Elder or Hunter Armour, preferbly an Astral Plate. Here we also do the fossil craft for 30% first. We not only smash Tier 1 Life, Tier 1 % Armour / Life Hybrid on it but also the Elder/Hunter mod for %Life. As Suffixes we want either Elder Recover % Life on Kill and Regenerate#% of Life per second or if you chose a Hunter chest Regenerate % Life per second If you are totally nuts, you can do an Elder/Hunter Hybrid Base and have a higher chance of the mods that both bases share but also have a lot of other mods that can happen, too. So it has ups and downs to do this.

The Helmet

The base will be an Eternal Burgonet. We are, again, putting on 30% quality first. As the helmet does not offer too many good things, we are only going to fossil craft it with Jagged Fossils and Pristine Fossils. We want Nearby Enemies take#% increased Physical Damage Regenerate#% of Life per second The other mods should be either resistances you are missing or intelligence. If you have an Elder version, you can also try to hit the Hybrid Prefix % increased Area Damage / Socketed Gems are Supported by Level#Concentrated Effect Our Helm enchantment is "15% increased Sunder Attack Speed"

The Gloves

The base will be Spiked Gloves. We will, yup, put 30% quality on them first. Here we will go mostly for Life, Flat Physical Damage to Attacks and Armor and Life Hybrid. If you want to go really expensive you can do Delve Crafting for Flat Damage on Bleeding enemies.

The Rings

Here we will take Steel Rings. You will probably need a 40+ INT roll on one of them. The rest mods are Flat life, Flat Physical Damage to Attacks, Attack Speed and Resists.

The Amulet

Our Amulet is still an INT or INT/DEX base. You want Flat Life, Flat Physical Damage to Attacks and Resists.

The Belt

Doesn't Change to our core setup. Life and Resists.

The Boots

Seriously. Use Kaom's Roots. These are ultimate. But if you have to be a Zoom Zoom Char that wants to die thanks to Freeze/Slow and stuff take some Warlord Titan Greaves. Yet again smash 30% Quality on them before anything else. Then you go for 30% - 35% Movement Speed, Flat Life, # to Maximum Endurance Charges or #% Physical Damage as extra Fire Damage, Regenerate #% of Life per Second, % Chance avoid being Stunned and any Elemental Avoidance Mod.

This is what you can craft. Remember to make a List, preferbly via Path of Building, of all uniques you want to use, so you know how much Resistances and Intelligence you need on your items. As this is highly variable, there is seriously no real "best" setup, as a lot of things depend on how you play your character. As long as you are capped on Resistances and have a T1 roll of flat maximum life on each rare gear, you can mix up your free slots with uniques mentioned.

Gems

Since we now have AWAKENED Skill Gems we will want to exchange a few gems in the endgame or when we can afford them. Please note that you still should first get yourself your 2 axes first. Those have the highest priority over everything else, except your resistances. Melee Physical Damage -> Awakened Melee Physical Damage Yes, this build is not in need of any much of those expensive extra gems. Even this one gem (twice in our build) is only giving us a minor boost.

How to Play

Our Gameplay is quite easy.

Always have your Auras active: Arctic Armor, Pride and Blood and Sand Our Blood and Sand is always on Blood Stance.

The rest is simple. Leap Slam to your Enemies -> Sunder > Leap Slam If something tough comes up, put up your Warchief next to the enemy.

On Bosses you get your Vaal Ancestral Warchief out on vulnerable phases and the rest is Sunder and Leap Slam out of attacks.