Maraudeur - [3.26] Chieftan VFoS Dawnstrider - Forum

Just another ordinary Volcanic Fissure of Snaking build... but watch out, that's no ordinary Volcanic Fissure of Snaking build!

Pob:
https://pobb.in/Fqd-7qFgZVu5

Everyone loves VFoS but it has the problem of being something you use yourself. Why do that when you can have totems do your slamming for you?

Main Idea:
Volcanic Fissure of Snaking, but using totems instead of self-use, and using Wilma's Requital + soul eater/onslaught to get 2x the normal boost to attack speed. Totems also leave us time to warcry a lot for buffs, even if we're not actually using the exerted attacks.
Chieftain was chosen to get easy max resistances and allowing us to stack solely fire resistance without having to worry at all about cold or lightning. Also warcries giving infinite power means we don't need to care where we're standing.

Pros:
- Necessary uniques are like 5c each. Getting to t16s should take < 2 div.
- Totem gameplay leaves room for dodging things and warcrying while maintaining uptime.
- Bonkers regen, easy max resistances, not too hard to cap block.
- Good scaling potential. I stopped upgrading after having 0 issues doing ultimatums, but someone dedicated could certainly scale it much further.

Cons:
- So many warcries means a lot of buttons to press.
- Totems are squishy in juicy content.
- Requiring boss drops means trade leagues only, or an alt in SSF.

For the last year or two I've been doing ultimatums and was looking for a new angle to approach them after more typical builds like flicker or lightning strike. Temporal bubbles are the bane of any ranged build and totems let us get past them without moving. Mercs, the new fire pen ring, and easy access to soul eater all contributed to me trying it out this league, and it ended up working fairly well.

Gameplay

Spoiler

Place totems.
Warcry a lot.
Stand around.
Watch things die.

Important Uniques to get started

Spoiler

Dawnstrider:
Since Earthbreaker support was removed this is the only way to have totems use slams. Fortunately it also comes with a 20% more damage multiplier and a free Ancestral Bond, so it's almost as much damage as a 6 link right outside the gate. Because totems are squishy I'd actually suggest going for a minimum roll on the totems take damage for you mod, though.

Wilma's Requital:
What makes attack based totems viable these days. Remember it gets the benefit of both attack and cast speed from soul eater/onslaught/frenzy charges, so attack speed comes very easily. Also you can get two anoints on it when you corrupt and tainted mythic orb a Cowl of the Ceraunophile into one. When I made mine the hats and mythic orbs were like 15c each so the main cost came from the oils.

Uniques for mid to high investment

Spoiler

Soul Ascension:
Not too expensive but not something you can grab straight out of the campaign. When you have the cash get a max roll chaos resistance. Don't worry about the max souls mod; until you're in t17s nothing will last long enough for you to get max stacks anyway.
To get souls with it, use Bladefall of Trarthus hooked to lifetap support, then hug the rare/unique you're fighting.

Enmity's Embrace:
The main way we're scaling our damage at mid to high investment.
Was cheap at the start of the league but then people realized how bonkers it is. Save up for a 65% reduced one and don't worry about the other mods.

Cloak of Flame:
75% fire resist to scale our ring? Yes please. Plus of course the 40% phys as fire.

Other Gear

Spoiler

Your weapon should be whatever mace you can find with the highest physical dps. Eventually you'll want one with an open prefix for the Hits can't be Evaded craft, so you can dump accuracy. Crit is less important on the weapon since we get so much flat crit from Battlemage's Cry.

A +1 max totems shield with life gain on block will probably be your next most important rare.

After that, stack fire resistance, life, fire resistance, chaos resistance, fire resistance, some int and dex for attribute requirements, and finally more fire resistance. For uber min-maxers, note the cap on effective fire resistance is 290% (aka +889%, considering the -60% from the campaign penalties and the 65% reduced from the ring).

Your Mercenary

Spoiler

Get a Smoulderstrike merc with Anger, Punishment, and combustion support on one of their attacks.

Next, scale its Anger to the moon with corrupted implicits on jewelry and eldritch implicits on body armor. This is very important since this is where we get the majority of our flat damage.

Finally load it up with various utility uniques (Dreadarc, Relentless Fury, Anathema, Kaom's Binding, Legacy of Fury). Eldritch implicit gloves for exposure and intimidate. I gave mine a Ezomyte Peak and Dream Fragments to keep it from being stunned/frozen.

Note a level 84 merc will give a better anger aura and punishment curse than an 83, but a level 83 one served me just fine to level 100.

Final Notes

Spoiler

Much of my pob is assuming we're doing ultimatums. For content without constant streams of enemies you may have flask uptime problems.

If mercs don't go core in the future we may have base damage problems due to lacking Anger aura.

Some points of potential improvement on what I have in my PoB is somehow getting some frenzy charges, armour, assassin's mark, and/or some more increased damage taken on the enemy. Also a tincture may be a good idea (I hate them and already press too many buttons so I didn't use one).

My pob set soul eater stacks to 10 since that's what it hovered around doing ultimatums. It also doesn't show steelskin, vaal haste, or magmatic strikes. No PoB nonsense to maximize dps here!

However, my pob dps is still lower than actual dps because VFoS can hit the same target multiple times and I have 3 totems. I didn't know what an appropriate multiplier would be to fudge it though so I left it as-is.

Украина в моём сердце

Dernier bump le 28 juin 2025 à 21:40:36