Tectonic Slam Chieftain Marauder Build Guide - Path of Exile 3.24

Table of contents:

> Basics

> Mechanics

> Playstyle

> Class, Tree, Pantheon, Masteries

> Equipment

> Flasks

> Skill Gems

Tectonic Slam is the main fire-based Slam skill in Path of Exile. When you perform the slam, you unleash a fissure in front of you, spreading randomly in multiple directions. Every third time you attack with this skill, it will consume an endurance charge - which is the drawback of the skill scaling magnificently with endurance charges, which buff its area of effect greatly.

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Basics

Tectonic Slam is a pretty straightforward skill. It's a slam, which is one of the three main types of melee attacks in PoE. Slams are slow, but hard hitting. The main way of scaling their damage is usually using warcries, which buff (exert) a limited amount of strikes - which proves way more useful for skills that hit only once or twice a second, rather than twenty. These huge hits are both satisfying for single target and good for clear - as high hit damage stuns enemies, making them unable to retaliate after you land your powerful blow on them.

Pros and Cons

+ Great boss-killer.

+ Really, really satisfying to use.

+ High recovery and protection against physical hits.

- Requires cycling warcries

Mechanics Used

· Warcries/Exertion - these are castable buffs, which taunt enemies in an area and empower your next attacks. You can have multiple warcries exerting your attacks at the same time. Warcries also buff you for a couple seconds, scaling with the amount and strength of enemies around you.

· Endurance Charges are a stackable kind of buff. These charges provide us with extra elemental resistance and physical damage reduction. They share their duration, so you don't have to worry about generating them too often. Getting a new one while being at your maximum amount of charges will just refresh the duration.

· Exposure: This is basically "elemental resistance shred" in PoE - the catch is, only the highest source of Exposure can apply at the same time. Our main ways of applying Exposure are item implicits (gloves) or the awakened fire penetration support gem (its quality provides us with 10% chance to inflict fire exposure).

Useful Links and Path of Building

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Playstyle and Leveling

Leveling

Tectonic slam is available from around the mid act 3, so before that use Ground Slam, which is a really strong early game alternative.

Use 2-handed unique weapons (axes/staves) for leveling.

Playstyle

Cycle through your Warcries to make sure you're applying the maximum amount of exertions at the same time. The proper order is:

Intimidating Cry -> Infernal Cry -> Rallying Cry

Then keep reapplying the ones that are gone.

Before engaging difficult unique enemies, I strongly advise you to lay down both your Vaal Ancestral Warchief and regular Warchief totems to buff your DPS.

Map Mods

Avoid Elemental Reflect at all cost! That mod makes us one-shot ourselves whenever we hit any enemy with our spells.

Class, Tree, Pantheon

Passive Points

· Tree for level 100

The main version of the build

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Masteries

+50 to maximum Life

+8% Chance to Block Attack Damage if you've Stunned an Enemy Recently

10% increased maximum Life, 10% reduced Life Recovery rate

20% increased Damage for each time you've Warcried Recently

40% increased Damage with Hits against Rare and Unique Enemies

Exposure you inflict applies at least -18% to the affected Resistance

Recover 15% of Life when you use a Warcry

Class

The Ascendancy (subclass) we're using for this build is the Chieftain.

· Tasalio, Cleansing Water (Normal): This will fix our resistances (with the huge +100% fire resist bonus), protect us from ignites and overall make us way safer in the early game.

· Ngamahu, Flame's Advance (Cruel): Converts the remaining physical damage from our attacks into fire, increasing our damage. It also provides us with a cyclical buff (which applies to us for 40% of the time) increasing our single target.

· Valako, Storm's Embrace (Merciless): Endurance charge generation, more damage, life regeneration and an additional endurance charge are all great choices for us at the end of the campaign, as they smooth out the gameplay of this build.

· Tukohama, War's Herald (Eternal): Probably the strongest pure DPS node chieftain has to offer, as it doubles the effects of our Ancestral totems, magnifying our damage by a wide margin.

Pantheon

· Soul of the Lunaris: Since we are already stun immune, we don't want to run Brine King. Lunaris has great conditional upgrades, which are active nearly all the time (since we nearly always count as  "hit recently")

· Soul of Gruthkul: Since we hit ourselves constantly thanks to Echoes of Creation, we will constantly have the additional physical damage reduction provided by this pantheon.

Anointment

· The perfect anointment for this build would be the Panopticon notable, which buffs our totems' defenses and makes them grant us even more damage.

Equipment

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Helmets

· Abyssus this is the choice for seasoned players only. It offers a huge DPS boost (over 50% more damage) at the price of making us way more vulnerable to physical attacks. The drawback is noticeable, but not as much as in other builds slapping this helmet on without care.

· Rare Helmet is the cheapest option for this build.

Mods you should look for on rare helmets are:

- +90 to Maximum Life

- at least three mods giving you +35% to Elemental resistances

· Echoes of Creation is our main choice for this build, as it provides us with a HUGE damage bonus, while coming with a really small penalty. When we attack, we take physical damage for each warcry exerting our slams - which gets completely nullified due to our high amounts of physical reduction, dealing only about 4% of our maximum life per attack. In return for that, we get a whopping 45% more damage and an additional cooldown use of our warcries - which helps with their uptime.

Boots

· Death's Door is a moderately expensive pair of unique boots that drops in the Labyrinth. They give us an extra endurance charge, have nice stats and render us immune to bleed.

For the endgame you want rare boots. There is no other option, as these can be crafted with really powerful eldritch implicits, that grant us a lot of defenses.

Mods you should look for on rare boots are:

- + to movement speed

- + or higher to Maximum Life

- +% to one elemental resistance

- +% to another elemental resistance

Get the %life regenerated per endurance charge implicit on those by using the eldritch ichor/ember currencies.

Gloves

· Rare Gloves - This build can't really make use of any of the unique gloves in the game, that's why we want to focus on rares.

Mods you should look for are:

- +70 or higher to Maximum Life

- +35% to one elemental resistance

- +35% to another elemental resistance

Body Armour

· Loreweave is the best unique option for this build. It is obtained by vendoring 60 unique rings (full equipment) at the same time. It gives a variety of bonuses, including setting our maximum resistances at 78% - which you cannot modify at all - including debuffs.

· Rare 6-link Armor is what we want to use in the endgame - which makes it a great choice for beginners. You can get a 6-link rare armor for nearly nothing, making it a MUCH cheaper option.

Try to look for armours with these modifiers:

- +120 or more to Maximum Life

- Elemental resistances

- Attacks have +to Critical Strike Chance (elder influence)

Weapons

· Disintegrator - We ignore most of the stats granted by this weapon, as we purely care about the super high hit damage it provides. All in all, it's a solid and very cheap staff.

· The Yielding Mortality - An interesting choice, to say the least. It has high average hit and crit chance and it also grants us the Summon Greater Harbinger of Brutality skill giving us significantly increased Damage, Attack Speed, and Movement Speed, reducing the Damage you take, and causing Bleeding Enemies that you Kill to Explode, dealing 10% of their maximum Life as Physical Damage.

· Rare Eventuality Rod - this is the best choice for this build, although the most expensive one too. We care about critical strike chance, flat physical damage and the Hits can't be evaded mod, which gives us 100% hit chance.

Rings

· Rare Rings are the main option for this build.

- +60 or higher to Maximum Life

- at least +35% to two different elemental resistances

- added physical damage to attacks

- + to chaos resistance

Belts

· Rare belt - this is the main endgame option for this build.

- + to Maximum Life

- +% to one Elemental Resistance

- +% to another Elemental Resistance

- + to Strength

Headhunter - a super expensive, but super good belt for this build. It's been sought after for the majority of the game's lifespan for a good reason - it makes clearing maps a breeze due to the numerous defensive and offensive modifiers you steal from every rare mob you kill.

Amulets

· Rare Amulet is the cheaper amulet for this build.

Look for these mods:

- +70 or higher to Maximum Life

- +% to global critical strike multiplier

- Added physical damage to attacks

- %increased elemental damage with attack skills

Optionally:

- Any extra resistances or attributes we need.

· Crystallized Omniscience is the extremely expensive, extremely strong amulet. Just putting it on and modifying our build a little (getting more attributes on your gear, grabbing certain passives like the Utmost Might cluster on the tree) can make it easily multiply our DPS. Definitely the best choice for the top end.

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:

· Life Flask of Staunching - Remember to use either the Eternal or Divine life flasks - as these are the highest tier flasks in the game. It's important to get any of the bleed removal mods on these, as it's our only way of dealing with it - and it tends to deal INSANE amounts of damage.

· Bottled Faith - our main DPS flask, which grants our enemies increased damage taken and makes us more likely to score a critical strike on them as long as they are on consecrated ground - which this ground spreads over a huge area around us on use.

·Lion's Roaris a flask giving us both defenses (flat armor bonus) and offenses (%more melee physical damage). The knockback it gives us doesn't matter on endgame encounters, as a lot of atlas bosses are immune to it.

· Diamond Flask - a small boost to critical strike chance, but it also has space for some useful affixes which you can customize based on which debuff annoys you the most.

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

Jewels

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

Mods you should be looking for on these:

- % increased maximum Life

- +#% to Critical Strike Multiplier

On Cluster jewels, look for the Martial Prowess, Fuel the Fight, Feed the Fury, Overload or Graceful Execution notables.

· Lethal Pride - this jewel modifies passives around it, granting them an extra effect. You can reroll it with divine orbs, to find what suits you best. Try to look for %melee crit multi, melee damage, attack damage or attack damage leech.

· Forbidden Jewels - these jewels let you get the effects of an ascendancy point (even outside of your subclass!) as long as you have BOTH of them socketed in. The passive points we are most interested in are War Bringer, Unrelenting or Unyielding.

Gems

Body

Tectonic Slam = Fist of War = Elemental Damage with Attacks = Awakened Fire Penetration =  Melee Physical Damage = Ruthless

This is our main link setup. We link Tectonic Slam to multiple damage oriented support gems - but be wary of two of them. Fist of War will enhance our attacks every 1.8 seconds, making it often twice as strong. Try to time it with our Ruthless support, which procs every third attack - getting that attack also powered up by Fist of War will literally quadruple its damage.

Weapon 1

Vaal Ancestral Warchief = Combustion = Multiple Totems ||| Herald of Purity = Determination = Flame Dash

This is our supplementary damage setup. Vaal Ancestral Warchief will increase our melee damage, while also dealing a sizable amount of damage on its own. Link it to Combustion support, as that will make it lower enemies' fire resistance. Remember to keep these links separate from Herald of Purity! Determination is our defensive aura of choice, as we really need physical damage reduction. We use Flame Dash to move, as we're pretty socket starved.

Helmet

Intimidating Cry = Rallying Cry= Enduring Cry = Blood and Sand

Intimidating Cry intimidates enemies around us and exerts our next three attacks, making them deal double damage.

Rallying Cry makes us deal more damage based on the number of allies around us, including our Herald of Purity summons and Ancestral Warchief totems.

Enduring Cry is our emergency button for extra defenses and a burst of life regeneration, it doesn't exert attacks.

Blood and Sand is a very cheap aura, which lets us switch between two modes - one of them lowering our AoE, but buffing our damage (blood) and the other (sand) doing exactly the opposite.

Boots

Infernal Cry = Power Charge on Critical = Onslaught = Combustion

This is our final warcry. Infernal Cry covers enemies around us in Ash, slowing them and increasing their fire damage taken. Enemies covered in Ash by Infernal Cry also explode on death, making it a splendid choice for clear. On top of that, it exerts our attacks making them trigger Combust on every melee hit, which is an extra "free" attack. We link it to PCoC and Onslaught to get these buffs on single target, as they can proc from the additional Combust Hits. Combustion Support will also give us an extra source of the Combustion debuff, which lowers our enemies' fire resistance.

Gloves

Assassin's Mark = Vaal Molten Shell = Phase Run = Increased Duration

Assassin's Mark is a permanent curse, which we use on unique bosses to make ourselves more likely to crit them. Vaal Molten Shell is yet another defensive emergency button. It adds a defensive extra HP shield on us, which scales with our armor. Phase Run linked to Increased Duration is what we want to bind instead of "move only" on our left mouse click, as it will trigger occasionally, giving us a burst of movement speed at virtually no cost.