[3.21] Bladefall Blade Blast Witch Occultist Poison Guide

Table of contents:

> Basics
> Mechanics
> Playstyle
> Class, Tree, Pantheon, Masteries
> Equipment
> Flasks
> Skill Gems

Bladefall + Blade Blast have been used mostly in Hardcore, as they offer a lot of ‘free’ damage, letting you spec into the defenses more than your typical Softcore build. In this guide, I’ve taken a different approach - instead of going for a low damage, high tank build, I’ve tried to take the best of the two worlds, making it a reasonably tanky, high single target DPS build for all types of players to enjoy.

https://pastebin.com/mXai63aQ to use in Path of Building

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Basics

Blade Blast is a skill based around Lingering Blades. They are left behind by certain physical damage spells, staying on the ground upon spell cast. Blade Blast detonates them in a chain reaction, dealing huge amounts of damage. Since our cap for blades staying on the ground is around 50, we want to maximize the amount of them we can leave there with a single spellcast. This is where Bladefall comes into play.

Bladefall is a skill that fires multiple volleys of blades falling (hence the name, lol) onto the ground from above, leaving a lingering blade for each of them. By default, this skill fires 5 volleys per cast - an amount which, with clever use of gems, we increase to over 60 (which is above our cap!) to ensure we’re always maxed out on blades.

Pros and Cons

+ High effective HP due to a mix of life+ES
+ About 50mil DPS on endgame bosses
+ Slowing enemies with Temporal Chains feels awesome
+ Profane bloom explosions!

- Not a one-button playstyle
- NOT league start friendly

Mechanics Used

· Wither -This is a staple skill/debuff for chaos damage oriented builds. When fully stacked, it makes enemies take as much as 90% increased chaos damage - which roughly doubles our damage. More on that in the gem section of the guide.
· Curses are a big part of Occultist’s identity. They debuff enemies or mark them so the player has additional benefits while hitting them. There are two types of curses: Hexes, which can apply to multiple enemies, are stronger the longer they stay on the enemy (only if hand casted). Marks can apply to a single enemy at a time, but they offer much more damage than hexes. By default, enemies can only have ONE curse on them (this number can be increased).
· Poison is a damaging ailment that scales off of the hit’s physical and chaos damage. Because it is the only one that can stack an infinite amount of times by default, at the price of having half the duration of the other ones (ignite or bleed).

Useful Links and Path of Building

Path of Building: A powerful tool for planning/sharing builds. To have all info from this build compressed into one simple character sheet, use this link in the 'import' section.

https://pastebin.com/mXai63aQ

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https://pathofbuilding.community

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Playstyle and Leveling

Leveling

For early leveling, use Explosive Trap (it has a lot of damage!)

Playstyle

For clear we want to mostly use our BF+BB and Plaguebringer, as that is great for just running through enemies and letting the explosions take care of them.

For a single target, we wanna lay down as many blades as possible, mark our enemy with Poacher's Mark, get into Temporal Chains range and then explode it for tens of millions of poison DPS. 

Map Mods

Only mod that we really dislike is the poison avoidance mod.
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Class, Tree, Pantheon

Passive Points

· Tree for level 100

The main version of the build

https://pastebin.com/mXai63aQ

Import this link to Path of Building.

Masteries

+1% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier per 4% Chaos Resistance
+50 to maximum Life
10% increased maximum Life, 10% reduced Life Recovery rate
Grace has 25% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency
20% increased Effect of Withered
20% increased Poison Duration
30% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Curse Aura Skills
Auras from your Skills have 15% increased Effect on you
Critical Strike Chance is increased by chance to Suppress Spell Damage
Plague Bearer has 20% increased Maximum Plague Value
Skills that leave Lingering Blades have 20% chance to leave two Lingering Blades instead of one, Skills that leave Lingering Blades have +10 to Maximum Lingering Blades

Class

The Ascendancy (subclass) we’re using for this build is the Occultist
 

· Void Beacon (Normal): We take this node first, as it gives us the most damage (-20% chaos resistance is pretty good for early bosses). On top of that, it also disables our enemies’ life regen, one of the worst parts about fighting rares in early acts.

· Withering Presence (Cruel): Probably the strongest node we can get on Occultist early, as it grants us more chaos damage, automatic Withered application and heaps of chaos resistance, which is really hard to come by early.

· Malediction (Merciless): This gives us the extra curse slot, which we need to apply both Despair and Temporal Chains, while also making cursed enemies have Malediction on them, which lowers their damage and increases their damage taken, making them deal much lower damage.

· Profane Bloom (Eternal): That’s the single best node on the Occultist tree when it comes to clear. It is the best source of explosions in the game, as they deal really high damage and proc really often, buffing our mapping by a huge margin.

Pantheon

· Soul of the Brine King: Protection against chain stuns and freeze (when upgraded).

· Soul of Garukhan: Since we want to have as much defense as possible, we pick this up to lower the efficiency of shocks on us.

Anointment

· Mark the Prey is the best anointment for when you don’t have a lot of money, but still want to increase your single target. Disciple of the Unyielding is the notable you anoint if you want to get some extra defenses for clear, but I don’t think we really need that. Undoubtedly, the best anointment is the Corruption notable, which increases the effect of our withered.

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Equipment

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Helmets

· Eber’s Unification is a great pick, since it comes with the Void Gaze skill, which lowers the chaos resistance of enemies in front of us by -20%, making it a great single target boost.
On top of that, it has an okay amount of energy shield and mana.

· Heretic’s Veil is what you can use if you want some extra slots for gems, since it automatically supports any curse gem socketed in it with the Blasphemy support, also reducing its mana reservation.

· Rare Helmet is the best way to scale both the defense and offense of our build. The most important part is the Blade Blast has 24% increased Area of Effect enchant, as it makes us both clear and kill bosses way faster. Try to get +maximum Life and the %increased Duration of Ailments applies while Focused crafted mod, which makes our poisons deal twice as much damage on single target. With Eldritch currency, get the %temporal chains effect implicit.

Boots

· Rare boots - there are no uniques that we can really benefit from, so we’re choosing to go for a pair of rare boots. Mods you should look for are:
- high %increased movement speed
- chance to Suppress Spell Damage
- +to maximum Life

If possible, try to get the %mana regeneration rate enchant, and the %increased action speed implicit from the searing exarch eldritch embers. From eldritch ichors, get the Gain %physical damage as extra chaos damage (preferably the conditional, unique enemy or pinnacle boss ones).

Gloves

·  Fenumus’ Weave - this is a very solid, albeit not our main option. If you can somehow (like by using the Heretic’s Veil helmet) get enough free mana to be able to turn on Aspect of the Spider, these gloves will give you a lot more single target DPS and a strong defensive buff.

· Rare Gloves - This build benefits the most from a rare pair.

Your gloves should have these mods:
- +to maximum Life
- %chance to Suppress Spell Damage
- Socketed gems are supported by level 15+ Faster Casting

Body Armour

· Rare Body is the best body armor for this build. We can get multiple valuable stats on it, like chance to Suppress Spell Damage or %increased maximum life. For the implicits, look for Grace has %increased Aura Effect and the %increased Effect of your Curses mods. Bonus points if you can find a body armor with maximum life and additional resistances.

Weapon

· Obliteration - This is the wand we want to use super early into the endgame, before we can get the Profane Bloom explosions. It makes enemies we kill have a chance to explode, dealing high chaos damage to everyone around them - on top of that, they also give us extra chaos damage based on our physical damage, giving us extra poison damage.
· Rare Wand - this is the best choice for this build, coming at vastly different price points depending on its stats. Thankfully, we don’t need that many expensive stats, so look for that:

- +to level of All Spell Skill Gems
- +to level of All Chaos Spell Skill Gems

If you can get those stats on a wand, consider crafting any of the other remaining ones, like
- %increased spell/chaos damage
- +% to chaos damage over time multiplier

Shield

· Rare shields are the only real pick for us, because of the super strong stats they can roll. We want a Redeemer-influenced shield, as they can have the BiS slot for us: increased effect of curses. We also want maximum life, chance to suppress spell damage and a free prefix slot - so we can craft the Gain %of Physical damage as Extra Chaos Damage modifier.

Rings

· Rare rings are what we use, since we need a bunch of elemental resistances and some other super useful stats. Look for rings that have high added maximum life and at least one high (40+) elemental resistance. At least one of your rings should have the “Curse enemies with despair on hit” modifier, as that’s our source of this curse. If you can find one, make sure your other ring has the “life gain on enemies hit by your spells” mod, which is a great source of life recovery for our build, as we hit enemies tens of times a second. A VERY important mod is the craftable prefix, which gives -total mana cost to non-channeled skills. It is the MOST important mod, as it makes us not run out of mana while spamming our skills.

Belts

· Rare belt - no unique belts, other than Headhunter or Mageblood are really beneficial to us, so instead we’re using a plain old rare Stygian Vise. The mods to look for are:

- + to Maximum Life

- +% to Elemental Resistance

- +% to another Elemental Resistance

If you’re rich enough, get a belt with the Withered enchant, which lowers our enemies’ resistances.

Amulets

· Rare Amulet is our pick for this build, as no unique amulets can really outclass it.

Mods you should look for are:

- +to maximum Life
- +%to Damage over Time Multiplier
- REALLY IMPORTANT! Non-channeling skill have -8 to Total Mana Cost (craftable mod).

Those are the most important ones, but on top of that, you can get intelligence, strength or any of the resistances. Look for Citrine or Jade bases.

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Flasks

Flasks in Path of Exile are different from other games. Not all of them are made for regaining life and mana - a lot of them are more offensively oriented. This build's setup looks like this:

We want all of our flasks (other than Life) to have the “Gain X flask charges when you are hit by an enemy” mod.

· Quicksilver Flask - this is the flask used most commonly in all of PoE. It grants us the most important stuff of all - speed :)

· Granite Flask - We wanna buff our armor, since that’s our main way of protecting ourselves from physical attacks. Try to get the %increased armor during flask effect suffix on it.

· Jade Flask - Since we’re already using a Granite, we want to get some extra evasion to make sure we can avoid a number of attacks from enemies, letting us recover life in the downtime between their hits.

· Life Flask is a Divine Life Flask with the Seething mod on it, which lowers the recovery it provides but makes it instant. This is our pani button for when we take a bit too much damage. Get the Bleed+Corrupting Blood removal mod on it.

· Silver Flask - this flask grants Onslaught, which is a buff that gives 20% increased attack, cast and movement speed. Get the %reduced effect of shock affix on it.

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Jewels

Jewels are items socketable in Jewel Sockets found on the passive tree.

On rare jewels, look for increased maximum life and as much chaos damage over time multiplier + damage over time multiplier as possible

· Cluster jewels are jewels socketable into outermost sockets on our tree, providing us with extra nodes to allocate with our passive points.
Large - Unholy Grace, Wicked Pall, Overwhelming Malice, Eldritch Inspiration
Medium - Wicked Pall, Septic Spells, Eldritch Inspiration

· Watcher’s Eye - this jewel can roll multiple modifiers connected to the auras we use. Look for the +to damage over time multiplier while affected by Malevolence.

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Gems

Body

Blade Blast = Deadly Ailments = Chance to Poison = Unbound Ailments = Void Manipulation = Increased Area of Effect

This is our main single target setup. Blade Blast needs to be linked to Chance to Poison, as that will ensure we hit 100% chance to poison on hit. Unbound Ailments increase the duration of our poisons, making them deal much more damage against a single target. Increased Area of Effect, although normally not seen in single target setups, actually benefits us greatly here, since it makes blade explosions overlap more often.

Weapon

Cast When Damage Taken (level 2) = Vaal Molten Shell (level 11) = Poacher’s Mark

This is the supplementary CWDT setup. CWDT linked to Molten Shell will trigger it whenever we are hit for a certain amount of damage, giving us an extra pool of eHP scaling with our armor. Poacher’s Mark is our single target curse of choice, as it gives us some extra physical damage and (remember to add quality to it with Gemcutter’s Prisms!) chance to gain a frenzy charge on hit. These charges give us more damage and increased cast speed.

Shield
 

Shield Charge = Faster Attacks = Flame Dash

This is our movement skill setup. For general movement between packs of monsters we wanna use Shield Charge linked to Faster Attacks, as it’s one of the fastest skills to use for traveling vast distances. Flame Dash is our panic movement skill, which we use to avoid one-shots and telegraphed AoE attacks from bosses.

Helmet

Blasphemy = Malevolence = Temporal Chains = Grace

This is our mana reservation setup. Temporal Chains (max quality!) linked to Blasphemy (preferably Awakened) will give us a permanent aura that slows all enemies around us greatly, making us much safer against melee enemies. It also slows the timer on poisons, making them last longer (while still dealing similar DPS!). It is the most important aura for this build. Grace and Malevolence are the two regular auras we use, giving us high amounts of evasion and more damage over time, which are the crux of our build.

Boots

Plague Bearer = Withering Step = Increased Area of Effect

This is our utility setup. Withering Step is a skill we use to apply Withered debuffs to enemies in both single-target (at the start of the fight) and dense mob situations, where it might help with killing them quickly. Plague Bearer is a skill with two modes: While Incubating, it lowers our poison DPS, storing the “stolen” damage in a bar at the top of our screen. When we use it again, it starts the Infecting mode, where it deals chaos damage to everyone around us. We link both of those to Increased Area of Effect, as it will make them a lot stronger.

Gloves

Bladefall = Unleash = Spell Cascade = Concentrated Effect/Increased Area of Effect

This is our Bladefall setup, which we want to use to spawn as many Lingering Blades. Spell Cascade makes our skill fire three times as many volleys, by adding two additional volleys per every volley fired. Unleash generates about 1.5 seals a second, up to a maximum of 3. When you cast a skill linked to it, it expends all of the seals to activate the skill that many additional times, making us cast Bladefall four times (with a small penalty to cast speed). Since we want our blades as close to each other as possible for explosion overlap purposes, we use Concentrated Effect, which lowers the AoE.

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