With this build I wanted to use the Scion's potential to easily branch out across the passive tree to take advantage of multiple powerful defensive mechanics in a way that would result in an undying goddess of Nemesis league. I'm currently level 86 and I'm SUPER pleased with how it's turned out. Everything in this build just clicks - it's by far my favorite one to date.

If you want to play a build that simply cannot be hurt by most of the scary things in this game then this is the one for you.

This build has gotten a ton of positive feedback from people who have tested it out and this guide along with some of my videos will tell you everything you need to know to get it running for yourself!

So, lets take a look at what makes this character so defensively powerful.

The core mechanic driving this build is the Eldritch Battery and Mind Over Matter combo.


This is the 'Mana Shield' part of the build and one of the more powerful defensive mechanics in the game if you build for it right. The synergy of this setup in this build is also really nice as you'll see moving forward.

We use primarily Armor/Energy Shield gear and along with the Discipline Aura our total mana pool is HUGE. The side effect of this is our mana regen also goes through the roof, which is super important for both Arctic Armor and Mind Over Matter. I have about 3200 mana at the moment with about 1,000 unreserved after 3 auras.


As long as you have mana you take 30% less damage. This keystone is amazing if you build for it right. To be super effective you need at least 700 mana unreserved and enough regen to quickly replenish whenever you take damage (and without stopping you from using your skills). I feel like it's almost mandatory to combine this keystone with Eldritch battery but it might be possible to build for it with just a mana passive setup.



AA has fast become my single favourite skill in PoE. With a high level AA you can AFK and tank 10 LMP Voidbearers without taking a single point of damage. Tentacle Miscreations? Yeah them too. To test my level 19 Arctic Armor I even ran Poorjoys Asylum (map with 150% extra mob damage) and fought the Tentacle boss there while under the effects of Vulnerability and Flammability - 0 points of damage taken. It simply eats all of it.

A lot of EK builds also worry about reflect. AA seems to have that covered too. I did a double reflect map and rounded up two packs that had Phys and Ele reflect and tested it (quadruple reflect) - I took some damage but I couldnt kill myself through my life leech.

AA does have a drawback, huge mana regen requirements but we have that covered already in this setup. AR/ES gear + Discipline + Clarity + Regen gear gives us a huge amount. 266 per second at the moment and im hoping to boost this some more soon.


After AA, armor and MoM we have the final layer: life. This build gets a pretty good amount of it as a safety net - not as high as a pure life-focused build but I currently have 4500 with okay to good gear (for early nemesis). This should easily exceed 5,000 with a few more levels and gear upgrades.

EK doesn't have the potential of some other skills in PoE and it's average at best as a single target attack. However, it scales so well with so little investment and fits this build PERFECTLY. Level 50-60 your DPS will be pretty low compared to other players but in the 70's and 80's it just grows and grows like crazy. My EK just hit level 20 and my DPS is now 7,300 (6K is considered good for EK). I haven't even linked Empower with it yet! I expect I'll end up exceeding 10K damage, especially once I switch out to a Ming's Heart for 20% phys as extra chaos later.

Our damage in EK comes from added fire damage and hatred along with a few efficicent spell and phys damage boosts. Cast speed also helps towards end game. We eventually run Empower in our 6 link to bring the EK gem to level 22, boosting it's damage by a massive amount.

About 50 Regret Orbs have gone into min-maxing this tree and I am pretty happy with the result.

Link to Final Passive Skill Tree[www.pathofexile.com]


Note that this is just a suggested path but I have had feedback on people who went this route and said it worked very well! I personally went differently as I was doing a lot of respeccing while leveling and testing things.


Life and projectile damage! We take the projectile damage for now and level with Spectral Throw instead of EK. We get ready to go into templar area by grabbing the 30 DEX node which you'll notice you are severely lacking by this point. Link[www.pathofexile.com]


Now we go through spell damage and up to Eldritch Battery. Once you get Eldritch Battery you are free to switch over to EK! Link[www.pathofexile.com]


Head down and get Iron Reflexes and Mind Over Matter. When you get MoM respec the projectile nodes into the mana ones and then get the life near MoM and Purity of Flesh up in the top left of the tree. Link[www.pathofexile.com]


Now we get the Body and Soul cluster for a big boost to Mana and Armor and then the first set of Aura nodes which will help with MoM. You will likely be running Clarity and one other aura at this point. Purity if your resists are low otherwise Grace or Hatred. If you find your mana drops to 0 pretty often then just run Clarity for now. Link[www.pathofexile.com]


We drop some of the Life/Mana nodes for a while to get all our Auras working. Get the rest of the Templar nodes and all the Aura nodes. Link[www.pathofexile.com]


Finish off by getting Inner Force, Path of the Savant and the Life/Mana nodes as you see fit.

Here are the bandit quest choices for the three difficulties.


This build scales life by quite a bit so we get a huge bonus from base life like this.


This is a non specific physical damage increase, which means it scale the damage of Ethereal Knives. It's one of the few pure physical damage increases we can get in the game and it is very worthwhile.


I did consider the endurance charge for this, but I found that we were rarely at max charges with Cast on Damage Taken. This extra passive point goes into Life and Mana or some mana regen, which is much better than an endurance charge.

The skills used for this build and the support gems that go with them are as follows. Support are listed in a rough order of priority.

• Faster Projectiles
  
• Added Fire
  
• Life Leech
  
• Faster Casting
  
• Iron Will OR Level 2+ Empower

• Faster Casting
  
• Reduced Duration

• Enfeeble is my preferred curse.
  
• Projectile Weakness or Elemental Weakness if you like extra damage.
  
• Always link these to Faster casting if possible.

With Faster Casting if Possible


Usually you would keep AA at a certain level but in this build you pretty much want to max it out.

The exception is while levelling you'll want to make sure it's movement regen requirements are currently below your total mana regen. You can go a few points over as you'll still regen super quickly while standing still to attack with EK.


Everyone should have a cull with some MF unless they play with a MF character in my opinion!

Bear Trap + Culling Strike + Item Rarity

Bear Trap actually does okay damage in this so it makes for an easy cull.


All on a Red, Blue, Blue, Green 4 Link with Reduced Mana

Clarity + Discipline + Hatred OR Grace

If I am doing harder maps with lots of physical damage I use Grace instead of Hatred in the green socket, but for the most part I use Hatred.


You Have a few options, here are the ones I found to work well.

CoDT Level 4 + Enduring Cry Lvl 7 + Decoy Totem Lvl 9 + Molten Shell Lvl 9


CoDT Level 6 + Enduring Cry Lvl 8 + Decoy Totem Lvl 10 + Molten Shell Lvl 10

Enfeeble is also a good choice for your CoDT setup.

I explain Gearing in a fair bit of detail in this video if you want more info:

Chest Armour

Must be Armor/Evasion type as we need 3 red sockets on our 6 link. 5 Link can be EV/ES or AR/ES, whichever you can get.

Get a 5 link as soon as possible! Supports are a huge deal for EK and it's worth using a white 5L over a well rolled 4 link. I used a 50 life 20% resist 5 link for 20 levels at endgame. Save up for a 6 link as soon as your other gear is 'okay'.

Life, Resists and Armor/ES mods are optimal.

My current Chest Armor:

Helm, Boots & Gloves

One of these items needs to be Armor/ES (red/Blue) type as you'll need 3-4 red sockets for your Cast on Damage Taken setup. The other two can be either Evasion/ES or Armor/ES as you see fit.

Life, Resists and Increased Armor/Evasion/Energy shield are the core stats. Movement speed is pretty essential, aim for a minimum of 20% as this allows you to better reposition for EK. Movespeed also affects the delay of Lightning Warp.

My current Helm, Boots, and Gloves:

Wand

Core Stats are Spell Damage, Cast Speed and Projectile Speed. Mana Regeneration is highly desirable and if you can get + to skill gems you can even run your Arctic Armor in it.

My current Wand:

Shield

Pure Energy Shield type Shield is preferred as this will be a huge source of mana for you and spell mods. Core Mods are Spell Damage, Life, increased ES, Mana Regeneration & Resists. Additional Mana is also nice.

My current Shield:

Amulet

Use the Karui Ward until you get a wand with Projectile Speed.
The Karui Ward[pathofexile.gamepedia.com] is fantastic while levelling with EK - I actually used it all the way up to level 80 until I got a Projectile speed wand. I recommend switching to a rare amulet like mine (after you get Proj Speed on your wand) before that if you can but this is a really nice item for EK.

After that your end game amulet should aim for Spell Damage, Cast Speed & mana regeneration. Life and resists are also highly desirable.

My current Amulet:

Rings

Life, Reists and Mana Regeneration are the primary stats to aim for. Chaos damage is one thing we dont mitigate very well in this build so go for a Chaos Resist ring if possible. Cast Speed is also highly desirable.

The Ming's Heart[pathofexile.gamepedia.com] ring is my next planned item for this build - they are expensive in Nemesis at the moment but I'll see if I can get one for testing. I suspect it's going to be a huge DPS increase and the chaos resist is going to round off the defense of the build pretty nicely. We'll lose some life and mana which means I think it's only viable to start using at level 85+ but I think it's a nice end game piece.

My current Rings:

Belt

Rustic Sash is the best base type as it can scale the Phys damage of our EK (by up to 24%!). I pretty much just get life and resits on it but flask mods such as increased flask charges gained are always nice.

My current Belt:

Flasks

The only thing I dont like is the curse removal on the life flask as it doesnt give a duration ward vs Hexfont mobs. Everything else is pretty much optimal!

G'day ZiggyD Here!

I am an Australian full time professional gamer and YouTube producer (hoping to also move into livestreaming soon!). I've been playing Path of Exile since closed beta pretty consistently and covering it with guides on YouTube for almost as long.

I cover a few different games but Path of Exile has been my favourite for a long time because of how amazing the community is and how open and interactive the developers are. PoE is an amazing game and I want to continue to help players enjoy it on a deeper and more fulfilling level for a long time to come. I fully expect to still be making videos on this game in 5 years time when they release Act 10 - the developers and this community has what it takes to be around for at least that long.

You can find me on YouTube, Facebook[www.facebook.com], Twitter, my http://ziggyd.tv/ and, of course, on Path of Exile[www.pathofexile.com]! Please feel free to suggest videos you'd like to see or ask me questions about this amazing game!

Cheers,
ZiggyD