Your most enjoyable endgame build?

Asking that question because I am very good at starting a lot of builds but incapable of sticking to one for pushing to endgame (that come from POE maps experience I believe …).
I have got 5 builds and only two in the middle of standard monoliths, still haven’t found a build that totally click in the long run.

So, what build(s) do you enjoy spending the most time with and clear empower monoliths and/or arena with? and why?

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I really like this one.

Activate Reaper Form, then all you have to do is Transplant and Reap when Transplant is on cooldown (around 2 to 3 seconds). You deal huge poison damage.
It’s a very straight forward build, relatively easy to gear. The most important elements are a bing Healing Effectiveness, Transplant cooldown reduction idols and if you can find it the Chittin dagger that boosts your poison chance.
The build was originaly made by @FoE and presented in a video by @ApprenticeCorner.

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For me it’s my very first char and reason i bought LE in the first place, still my favorite character.

A Low Life non-ward Melee Lich

I just tweaked it over and over with new additions coming to the game, like like Death Seal (which is one of the newest Acolyte skills)

This build could be adpated to use a Staff, to shift the damage from Harvest to Bone Curse and Death Seal or even going a any spell instead of Harvest.

Second Build is my second character, which i also still love and maintained and tweaked over the years.

A 2H Erasing Strike Nuke VK, which got alot better with the reworked Forge Guard Passive Tree (Fresh from the Forge and Crushing Blows are sooo strong) a few patches ago and got just another buff in thee most recent patch, utilising Titan Heart

Both builds can easily do all empowered timeliens without any issues.

Especially the Lich basically can facetank 80% of all boss skills

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For me it’s very similar. I start a lot of builds and play them to lvl 70+. Then I loose a bit of grip and tend to servh fir new builds.

My recently played build is an Earthquake Beastmaster. I’m running Bear for tanking/survivability, Earthquake for the big damage, Swipe for mana and buffs, Warcry for CC and buffs, Leap for… the Leap (and buffs). After getting Bhulgurs Wrath (casts a free Earthquake after Leap) I try to build around that.

My altime favourite is my minion Necro, running Skeleton Rogues, Death Knights, Twin Golems, Dreadhade (more minion damage and attack speed) and Bone Course (for Mark For Death, additional skeletons and armour shred as well as kill threshold - one of the best skills in the game!!). It’s so satisfying commanding my undead servants to shred everything in their way.

:v:

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I’m lazy and like to face tank bosses, so I have been playing a Forge Guard variant of boardman21’s Regifter Paladin (dual wielding Undisputed and the Shard of the Shattered Lance). No problem with empowered Monoliths and up to 206 Arena waves. I need to do some more optimizing of gear and blessings to try and get back on Ladder, though. I enjoy skipping all the mobs until the end of the Echo and letting my Stalwart/Art of War stack into the hundreds as I evaporate the Echo boss. End bosses take more time since there’s no stacks, but with face tanking I just hold down right click and refresh Sigils, so it’s pretty easy.

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Melee Lich … freaking sweet!

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Well lich is quite popular and that’s the only build I didn’t even finish the story with (yet). It was strong but squishy (in my opinion/experience) and I didn’t click too much with it.

I do like to run through the echos as well.
My most played so far are:

  • throwing daggers bladedancer (the boardman guide), quite fun and strong but, ends up being one button press and the lack of mana optimisation (on mine) makes it a bit awkward.
  • shield throw paladin, the video from lizardman. This one has been surprisingly good, really good. But it still is a bit a one button gameplay. I am unsure about trying to start crafting to get it further, but the tanking is brilliant and the zdps not so zdps (so far).

I am basically looking for a destroyer of worlds that’s fun and don’t get randomly one shot too often. just that.

I don’t know what exactly you did, but Lich is super tanky, especially with reaper form you have a failsave mechanic.

While my build for example was already super tanky before, the addition of endurance catapulted my build into the stratosphere in terms of defensive power, since my build is non-Ward LowLife, so it does work perfectly for endurance.

I do have my endurance threshold exactly matching my “low life state”.

If it doesn’t click with you that another thing, but my Lich is to this day, my strongest build overall, the “weakest” part of my build is sustained singletarget dps.

Death Seal would need a unique or idol reducing it’s cooldown by like 1, 2 or 3 seconds, that would increas the sustain dps super much.

But i will most likely deliver a… uhhhh… something for this build very soon for singletarget dmg C=

My defense was based on the sustain via spell leech. The char had bad resistances which is common in levelling but I guess the lack of armour/dodge didn’t help.
I am quite uncomfortable with all the skills and passives that costs life, so probably not using transplant enough as well.
How do you manage the low life aspect without wards? that puts you more at risk of one shots doesn’t it?

This is risky, because you “accept” receiving damage. With leech, you lose life and get it back. If you lose too much life quickly (high mob density), you can die. But with endurance, you lose less life, so the risk to lose everything is far lower. The good choice in my opinion is the mix. Have strong endurance to avoid losing life and have good leech to retrieve quickly what you could not prevent losing. :wink:

Leech is no defense layer, but an sustain layer.
Lich has all the leech you’ll ever need in it’s passive tree so you can ignore it on items.

But you need at least one primary and one secondary defenselayer.

So let’s say hp primary and all the rest affixes for resistance.
You can basically use any combination of defenses like hp, resistance, Armour, dodge and endurance.

My whole low hp aspect is entirely managed by Death Seal via the Deadlock Node. Outside of Death Seal I do have 100% hp all the time.

This is literally the most tanky build I ever played since we got endurance.
I do have DR from bone Armour, death seal, endurance and a little bit of Armour.

I never received “random” one-shot and this build can endure some boss mechanics purposefully

I have never really invested in armor/dodge outside of sentinel/rogue because in those classes they are enhanced quite a lot by the passives.
I guess I really need to start looking at items and crafting more. And at the general (defensive) mechanics as well.

Thanks for the explanations. Still open to favourite builds, I tried pushing a bit more lich and tried necro as well, I think the class is not for me :confused:

Void Knight is a very nice class also.
I’m not sure you can compare it to any other classe in other HnS, it has something that feels very unique. With the Void Knight, you can have very fun builds, either single target or AoE.

That lich build looks juicy. Gonna try it out! Just why is the weapon with melee void damage and not necrotic one? Did I miss something?

Was wondering exactly this.

There is no Flat Necrotic dmg roll on weapons (except Bone Harvester/Hollow Finger uniques) so you can use any other flat dmg source like Void or Physical since Harvest converts all Flat dmg to Necrotic dmg with the ‘‘Elements of Deathh’’ node in Harvest tree.

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So @Ghostlight and @MidasPL as @TriKster pointed out, there is no melee necrotic dmg.

And since the “Elements of Death” Node in harvest converts all added dmg to necrotic. The damage type doesn’t matter.
That is actually one of the reasons why getting a very good weapon is relatively easy, since you can have a relatively soft filter(with all the different damage types) for your weapon.

Heavy I am tempted by this build (no not another Lich shouted the crowd!) and have the perfect weapon for it in mind (an almost maxed Kraken Beak I’ve been looking for a use for). However questions arise…

a) Low Health (and hence Death Seal) and Reaper Form seem counterproductive. I have a Reaper Lich but it sustains Reaper Form using 500% Healing Effectiveness and Aura of Decay and a big fat health pool. How do you sustain Reaper form with this build? Or is that not that important (in my build I basically need 100% Reaper uptime).

b) How many Arena waves can this build comfortably push?

The death seal and reaper Form are not counterproductive.

Reaperform also has LL nodes.
I can stay in Reaper Form for at least one entire echo. On quicker echoes I can even stay in Reaperform for 2-3 echoes.

The Lich Leech nodes are all you need for this.
For downtime between packs I use potions with the double potion effectiveness in Reaperform.
That is the only thing I use potions for.

I don’t like arena at all, so I never tried pushing competitively, but I tried one single time with older gear. (I only had 40%cold resistance at that point)
I died to cold dmg mobs, because I was already bored AF at that point :smiley:
So with some more patience and the gear that I currently have in my character planner I am almost certain that my char could reach 300-350 at least.

Maybe once I am bored again I can give it another try.

Btw, does it matter if I have for example 50 melee physical damage instead of 50 melee void damage on that 2h axe you got?