This build will help you go further in the ultimate league of Path of Exile: Sentinel Season and actually reach for the stars. You can get the most loot from this season with the help of this build, as it can handle everything in the game especially with the help of Path of Exile currency.
Build Introduction
Out of all the Blade Vortex builds we can use for Sentinel Season, this build is the least affected by the nerfs. The best aspects of the build are as follows:
- This build will dish out tons of damage and give you everything you may want from a league start.
- You will move insanely quickly
- This build is highly tanky.
- You can quickly clear faster and remarkable for single target enemies like the bosses.
To utilize the build, you need to effectively understand and play plague bearers because it will be your main clear ability. The blade vortex ability’s primary function is to stack the plague bearer ability. Focusing on the plague bearer will significantly increase your clear time.
This build also allows you to regenerate your health pool quite fast. When fighting bosses, enduring cry or a health flask is your go-to strategy to stay alive longer than the boss.
Why Would You Play Blade Vortex Assassin?
Suppose you want a well-rounded character that can easily be played as a jack of all trades. The best part is that it doesn’t require a lot of high-level gear to buff. You can work with cheaper equipment to play well in the early game. Furthermore, this build is for those players who want to use a single build for the entire season. You ease into other builds and leave behind your season starter most of the time. Finally, this build entails a tanky, fast, zooming, and bossing character, and you won’t need to look any further. Let’s begin.
How Does Blade Vortex Assassin Work?
Poison in PoE is a chaos debuff or an ailment that bases its damage on physical and poison damage. This build uses Blade Vortex, a simple AoE ability that can hit 7 times per second. The amount of hits is significant as it can affect the amount of poison applied to the enemy. You can further enhance this build by adding crit chance and Lifesteal. Furthermore, you can also increase the duration of applicable poison.
What Skills are Important for Blade Vortex Assassin Work?
Let’s discuss the most critical skills necessary for this build to work.
Withering Step – This ability stays on the character until you use another ability and with a low cooldown of 2.42 seconds. With this low CD, you can apply wither on the enemy, spam another ability, and apply to wither again, counting to 12 withers on a single target. You can also use it for a movement speed buff.
Blade Vortex – This is our staple ability for this build, which we will use for single targets. It is recommended to use this ability with Unleash to keep your stacks up. With the help of stacks, you will only need to cast this ability every 3-4 seconds with a maximum of 10. This is also the enabling ability for Plague Bearers, which we will talk about just below.
Plague Bearers – When you are adventuring, you need to turn this ability on. As soon as you attack enemies with Blade Vortex, Plague Bearers start increasing in buff numbers. When you have high enough stacks, enable the ability to get an aura around you which will deal increased damage. We will use this ability to clear the map.
Vaal Blade Vortex – It is a supplementary ability that you place on the ground that moves independently.
Flame Dash – Flame Dash is our movement ability to help you place your character into a mob or out of danger. You can also use this ability to traverse gaps and jumps.
Whirling Blades – Whirling Blades is included in this build in that it procs Fortified Support when you hit an enemy.
Endearing Cry – To get healing during boss fights and mostly removes the need for flasks.
How to Gear for Blade Vortex Assassin?
For this build, we recommend the following in item slots.
Weapon – Using Cold Iron Points for weapons as they can give you +3 to all physical spell gems. Plus, the level for gems is insanely crucial for this build to work properly.
Helm – Devouring Diadem is your go-to item for the helm slot as it will allow you to use all of your auras. This helm can fix all of your mana needs, plus give decent regen.
Chest and Gloves – For the chest, you can use Explody, and for the gloves, you can go with Embalmer. Embalmer is used primarily for passive stats like life, chaos resistance, poison duration, and, finally, chaos damage.
Rings – In the case of the rings, you can go for curse enemies with despair on hit and other passive stats. Life, resists, and any other passive you are low on.
Flasks – You should go for the Cinder Swallow urn to use enemies ignited by one of your flasks. You can complement this by adding fire damage on your gear if you can get the stat.
Ending Note
Now that we have covered all the fundamental basis for you to look out for, this build requires practice and timing. This build thrives on applying poison damage to your enemies using Blade Vortex and other abilities. The more damage you do, the higher the stacks of Plague Bearer. When the stacks of Plague Bearer are high enough, pop the skill to initiate the aura, which will help you clear the mobs. Proccing and activating Blade Vortex will be good enough for the bosses, and in no time, you will be looting sweet gear and gems to tackle more enemies. You can also look into our build for Toxic Rain Champion for best starter in the Sentinel Season.