3.28 - Updated | Banner Slammer | SSF & SSFHC | T17/Nightmare Viable

Notes for 3.28: due to Autoexertion/Overexertion support, slams have a lower floor than before. However, the ceiling is the same or higher than it used to be. My current character in an endgame (though far from optimized!) setup is visible here: https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/miragessf/character/seikikoo-3400/Seiki_Banners_Again?i=8&search=class%3DChampion

This build isn't a skill, it's a framework. It isn't an accident that this build was never titled "Earthshatter Champion"!


I. Introduction

Hi! I'm Seiki. I sometimes write stupid things in global 773 and once showed up in the yellow text in the SSFHC death alert log. I think I've created a good generalist build that is aimed at SSF and SSFHC. Because I am an SSF player who spends about half of my time in SSFHC as well, SSFHC viability is my goal here.

As such, with SSF in mind, I have created a build inspired by things I find annoying!
- no mandatory uniques (I want to be able to start playing a character in the first campaign of the league, but I do like having reasonably acquirable chase uniques)
- no essence-only mods
- no mandatory cluster jewel setups (annoying to roll)
- no setups that more or less require level 100 to function (annoying)
- no transfigured gems that are necessary for the function of a build (lab is annoying)
- I can just play the main skill once I get the gem in the campaign (switching gems is annoying and I just want to get comfy with what I'm going to be playing the whole time and watch it grow)
- I want a build that I can reliably play every league

I have rewritten this forum post to showcase my character, share thoughts for the build with respect to 3.28, and be open to potential ideas for further improvement from onlookers. I'd be positively thrilled if this build has a new level that it can achieve from the ideas of others that I haven't realized along the way.

If you are playing this and want to add me in game to ask questions or celebrate cool stuff you've found/new achievements you've hit with this build, feel free to add me in game. I don't mind. It's been fun talking with people hearing of them killing pinnacle bosses for the first time, finding a Mageblood, etc.!



II. What’s the build do?

Basically, we set up a valor stacking engine with automated warcries, then when needed, we use banners that serve as a self-steroid. It plays like a regular slam build, except you’re casting buffs on yourself that allow you to situationally respond to your needs.



III. I'm new or I have never played a slam build before. Is this build okay for me? Also, what about leveling?

I'd not recommend it. This post doesn't speak to the features of a basic slam build. Though you could outright copy and paste my character, this post doesn't speak to leveling, passive tree shakeups, and typical milestones. It also has additional idiosyncratic mechanics that no other build uses. A lot of nuance can be missed. If you are new, I recommend a regular Juggernaut, Berserker, or Slayer slam build instead. They are more straightforward and will take you more than far enough to have a good experience as a new player.

For leveling, if you want to play specifically to set out with the build, this is roughly what my tree looks like when I'm established in maps: https://tinyurl.com/bannerpassivetree. Note that I do make a point of taking Deep Breaths later in the campaign as well as Measured Fury - this helps with exertion uptime in the later part of the campaign, plus it helps ensure that even if my Intimidating Warcry cooldown isn't fast yet, the +1 helps ensure uptime on the exert until I have enough CDR later down the road to no longer need it. More on how we do this later in the post.



IV. Is this build cheesing unintended things?

No. This, as far as I can tell, seems to be an "ethical" build that isn't leveraging potentially unintended interactions like the recent infinite regeneration thing that surfaced this league.



V. Why to NOT Play the Build.

You are a new player. I don't want any new players to pick this up, feel overwhelmed and disoriented, and then feel they've lost their investment in trade or a lot of time in SSF. It's a strong build, but if you don't have an intuitive grasp of when to change passive and optimize your character, you will likely leave a lot on the table and things will feel off.

You are playing trade league. Yes, obviously this build will work in trade league, but the point of trade league is to leverage the market to make obscenely powerful builds that are impossible in an SSF setting. If you're playing trade, you should take advantage of that - no need for SSF builds if you're not limited by SSF.

You want an infinite investment build. Yes, you definitely can invest in this build. My current character is proof of this I hope with some chase uniques going on! But if you're hungry for an infinite budget hyperscaling build like an aura or armor stacker that does billions of DPS and just goes and goes and goes for as many months or mirrors you can commit to it, this is not it. All slam builds have hard ceilings eventually.

It is NOT a one button build. At high gear levels, this is sort of a 2 button build. When doing bosses, it is a 5 or 6 button build depending on your setup. When doing harder maps, it varies between 2 and 5 buttons. However, if you like having buttons to press so you do not fall asleep on your keyboard while playing Righteous Fire or Cyclone, this is an upside.

This build DOES require some positioning and spatial awareness in relation to whether or not you are or are not in your banner’s radius. Banner AoE is large without intentional investment and can be made larger than Maven's entire arena.

This build DOES require paying attention to how many stacks of a buff you have early on. This is eventually mostly trivialized, but it’s worth honest mention during early stages of the build. Tracking a buff might be initially repulsive, and there's definitely payoff, but it does have early growing pains.

If you were traumatized by the slam builds of old where we used self-casted warcries and ancestral totems. Honestly, this build is a lot like that old playstyle where we used warcries to juice up slams. However, it's much smoother to play as banners fortunately are an instant cast that do not interrupt any other actions.



VI. Why to play the build.

This build is notably defensive in nature. This is NOT an immortal build though. You will need a different build if that’s your goal.

To summarize an endgame setup's defenses:
a. 90% maximum resistance.
b. 65% attack and spell block.
c. 100% spell suppression.
d. Upwards of 987 life gained on block.
e. Approximately 18-20% life regenerated per second.
f. 45,000+ armor. You can push this higher if you focus on armor itemization, Foulborn Ancestral Vision, and using armor flask bases. I am not, so the 45,000 figure is from my current character.
g. 50%+ chance to evade on stat sheet at the high end without using a Jade flask.
h. Ailment immunity through unique jewels or avoidance boot setups, though this feels hardly necessary once the character is up there
i. Curse immunity.
j. Stun immunity.
k. Regular amounts of leech. Not a huge fan of overleech on this build.
l. 30% reduced crit damage taken. 100% if Brass Dome and going full armor.
m. 5 endurance charges.
n. Capped Molten Shell. I use automate support for mine so it can eat incoming hits rather than limply trigger after taking a generally savage hit.
o. About lot of flat spell damage reduction.
p. About 1800% uncapped total resistances. This is not useful whatsoever, short of accidentally making us functionally immune to exposure/elemental weakness so long as we have our banners up, but it is pretty funny.
q. 10% reduced DoT taken.
r. Able to pick up defensive patheons instead of shoring itself up with Brine King.
s. Permanent fortify.
t. Depending on setup, further damage reduction from Flesh and Stone

Offensively, the build has enough damage to do what it wants within reason. Examples can be found at the end.



VII. What banners do.

This build leverages Champion's 3.26 ascendancy node that "grants Having a placed Banner does not prevent you gaining Valour, and Banner Skills have 50% increased Duration." The beauty of this node is that it functionally means Champion now has a built-in Perfidy and it solves the main thing that banners used to have going against them - not being able to actually build your banners up while using them or benefiting from multiple effects. Now we can have all 3 banner effects. This is the core identity of the build.

War Banner dramatically ups your damage multi and gives you enough accuracy to turn on Precise Technique once your tree is more built out. It essentially becomes a 3x damage multiplier button on my character at this point.

Dread Banner is the source of block and life gain on block. Very strong and requires diligence when mapping. It lets you handily charge into large packs with reasonable safety if you actually press it. Early on, this will cap your attack block, and as you gain more aura effectiveness and gem levels, you’ll eventually be able to cap spell block by taking Versatile Combatant later. This change usually happens for me around early mapping. Not necessary to focus on in campaign.

Defiance Banner is the source of suppression and flat spell damage reduction. At upwards of 11% more aura effect per valor at level 21 with additional levels pushing it to -13 flat: -13 * 2.07 * (105 * .11) = -350. This is not significant vs. large boss attacks, but it’s good shotgun protection against things like spark goatmen or Enslaver with lots of small hits.



VIII. How we actually make banners work.

We utilize a confluence of mechanics to create an engine, essentially. This is what the build is centralized around, which is why this build pretty much only works on Champion and Champion alone due to Worthy Causes node allowing us to generate valor without interruption.

i. We take Renowned Deeds to raise max valor to 105. Absolutely mandatory.
ii. We take Bannerman to make clearing with banners functionally okay.
iii. From here, we take the banner mastery that generates 5 valor per warcry.
iv. We autoexert as many warcries as we can, then drive this further with cooldown reduction. Early on, this is done with the Measured Fury wheels and Deep Breaths.

I like manually pathing to them early, then anointing Deep Breaths later while trying to find Foulborn Uul-Netol's Kiss. The warcry spam, although it is visually annoying, will passively generate your valor generation that is buffed by the valor gain % passives on the tree, plus you get a little from combat itself.

It is worth knowing that walking out of a banner’s radius, due to Champion’s Inspirational node, benefits from valor gain passives. This means a fully juiced 105 stack banner will refund you a large amount, plus you will still be generating valor while running around. This is why sustaining Defiance Banner while mapping is doable once your passives are in place, and why you can ensure high uptime during bosses. You will have enough valor generation eventually to sustain all three banners against bosses.



IX. Late game strategies for valor generation:

Foulborn Uul-Netol’s Kiss with 500% CDR allows us to drop Deep Breaths and Measured Fury. While they still remain good nodes, it’s an issue of diminishing returns because they are all increased % CD nodes. I like putting those passive points into life or other things upon picking up the axe. This weapon is slow, which a lot of people dislike. Please understand this in advance of playing. If you need a skill with 0.1 cast times, this is not for you. In endgame setups, 0.7 to 0.8 attacks per second is common. Even at my character's current state, I am around 1 attack per second.

I think this axe is best in slot for this framework. Between cursing on hit to free up a gem socket, upping valor generation a lot, and absolving me of the need to make a high DPS impact force propagator and roleplay as a Berserker, it's just well-aligned with the aims of the build. Plus, since it’s unique and not TOO terribly rare, 6Ling and corrupting them for chances at good corruptions isn’t completely out of the question. I’m still working on this part myself.

Runegraft of Time essentially translates into 20% more valor generation. If it triggers on an automatically casted warcry, it will instantly recast that same warcry. It can proc off of itself as well. For this, it's really nice - and it gives a good bit of damage too. However, the downside is that it will proc spell-based movement speed skills twice. You will have to get used to it if you use Frostblink, otherwise, using something like Dash or a 1L leap slam to traverse gaps is the move.

Question: but are banners and valor generation annoying? They are just a temporary buff and have an AoE. They aren’t an aura!

You’re kind of not wrong in that you do have to pay attention to them. The AoE is larger than Maven’s entire arena if you want it to be though. I have level 21 banners with a helmet corruption that pushes them into 11% more AoE per, and I use increased AoE support, which makes them usefully large.

The duration, after quality, incidental investment on the passive tree, and no other investment (such as more duration support), is 29.76 seconds. This is pretty long. I do not try to make them last any longer anyway, as they are my source of endurance and frenzy charges. You could, I guess, automate charges with an exert medium cluster and go for 45+ second banners if you wanted, but I feel the opportunity cost is far too high.



X. Aura effectiveness for banners

Aura effectiveness and how much you need or want will vary as you progress. War Banner (to ensure that Precise Technique is triggered) and Dread Banner (to ensure having spell block cap) are what are to be used as the benchmarks for if you have enough aura effect or not.

If you have level 23 banners, you need less aura effectiveness on the tree to hit spell block cap. This is the first major breakpoint to consider for aura effectiveness. You can sometimes even give up your aura effectiveness body armor implicit and/or 10% non-curse effectiveness mastery on the tree like I have while still hitting 65% spell block, thus freeing up a few passive points as a stretch goal. Earlier on, you might need every source to help ensure 65% spell block, including the 20% increased banner prefix. Unfortunately, even in an endgame setup, due to the value of eldritch implicits, I think you'll always have 20% increased banner effect prefix on your body armor, even if it means giving up a reasonable chunk of armor/evasion. I also recommend having some accuracy on gear if you can squeeze it in eventually to help make this a non-issue to let you run modest amounts -aura effectiveness mods while progressing through the atlas and doing non-T17 maps with lower aura effectivenss map debuffs.

This is why I have corrupted Echoes for my helmet - multiple +2 corruptions exist, making hitting level 23 on banners pretty reasonable in SSF. There's also a possibility of hitting the next more % per valor breakpoint on each banner with a +4 corruption and an empower support, but I don't necessarily recommend it. If you're a power gamer, you can even go for +4 corruption on helmet, +1 on gem, and then an empower gem, making each banner scale more at level 27. Might let you drop more aura effectiveness elsewhere.

Using Empower Support also can be a good although sometimes unnecessary stepping stone to making sure you're able to cap your spell block chance and to gain more accuracy on War Banner. I did this for a while when I was farming Uber Shaper to secure +level corruptions.

However, ultimately, more aura effectiveness means more damage with War Banner, even after hitting block caps. There is something to be said about diminishing returns here and if you think modifiers/passives are worth giving up over, say, more armor/evasion on body armor prefixes. It's all opportunity cost and up to the individual to determine what is the right configuration for their needs.



XI. Thoughts on ascendancies

Inspirational and Worthy Causes are mandatory. I like Fortitude because of the stability it provides as my third when hitting mapping. I take Master of Metal as my 4th ascendancy while trying to find Oshabi.

I am a fan of the Oshabi bloodline. With enough warcries linked and CDR, we can have full uptime on The Wild Bear, granting stun immunity as well as some good damage/action speed buffs. The physical overwhelm is nice too, which is why I start leveling with Bastion Breaker and the overwhelm % mastery, but eventually switch out.

You could argue that you could also take Inspirational --> Worthy Causes --> Master of Metal --> Oshabi, but you will need to use Fortify as a support gem, you will need to be diligent, and you will lose max hit because of having fewer max fortify stacks.



XII. What gems to main skill?

This is where the framework nature of the build comes through. I believe this build has several completely viable, competing skills.

TL;DR: Ground Slam good big 1 hit. Perforate good all things, very comfy clearing, kill switch for boss. Perforate of Duality hugely boss damage with extra button. Earthshatter of Prominence big clear, slightly awkward. Earthshatter good general purpose, damage is inconsistent because positioning.

Ground Slam of Earthshaking




Boneshatter of Complex Trauma



Perforate



Perforate of Duality



Earthshatter of PROMINENCE



Regular Earthshatter




XIII. WARNINGS FOR HC (HC players and SC dying unjoyers please read).

One of this build’s biggest problems is its movement speed. While it goes up to 450% movement speed, and gets funny if you hit an action shrine, this amount of movement speed causes problems on bosses and can result in you dying while mapping. Suffering from success, I guess.

You kind of have to switch over to click to move gameplay when wanting to try to be precise during Sirus’s maze, uber Maven’s everything disabling HP regen if you touch it, uber Exarch ball phases, etc.[/spoiler]

If you play this build, you very realistically will eventually die because of a movement speed-related issue. Either you lost control during a boss, or you ran into a pack one screen over that you did not process in time. This is a large part of why I adopted armor/evasion itemization so that I am less likely to be shotgunned. Please keep this in mind.

Please use judgment on what mods you want to run. This build is not crit immune unless you go out of your way to achieve it. I have not yet determined some sort of elegant way of being crit immune without Brass Dome, which disables being able to benefit from hybrid itmeization. The action speed slow one, while honestly fine, is a -fun % modifier. Aura effectiveness does not break this build, but it can turn your Precise Technique off and lower your damage and general durability. Aura effect with map effectiveness atlas nodes can hit your block pretty well. Reflect is an issue, but can be doable with Mageblood (please do not kill yourself on reflect with a Covetous Shrine or Vulnerability amplifying your damage taken). You actually can do no leech maps. ~85% less regen maps are doable, but annoying (like you'd expect for any life build).



XIV. Examples of the build in action.

The Feared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dDX1SHcUsY
Observe that the mods are not ones that make the bosses tankier. This is to have a standard representation of DPS. Also I dislike Sirus in the new feared lol.

Wave 15 Simulacrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5yawXT0dgI
Know that I did NOT use the corpse explode passives. Clear would've been easier with it, but I think it's overkill at this point.



FAQs:

What kind of damage are you seeing on the build? In a middle game setup, 10m. In a true endgame setup, unless I realize more optimizations, approximately 100m.


Is Mageblood necessary? No, not at all. You can actually use Foulborn Soul Tether with Everlasting Sacrifice to get more max res than Mageblood so long as you get a max ES roll on gear or on a blue jewel (life blue jewel + max ES implicit from synthesis + ES on hit is a real wombo combo). Resist shrine belts are a thing too. I basically spent this whole character using a Bisco's Leash for IIR or a regular Soul Tether when doing ubers/T17 early. Regular belts are great early on too, including rares with CDR for more warcries before you have your first Uul-Netol's Kiss. Ryslatha's is also still the superior damage option. All in all, belts on this build seem to be the biggest flexible slot, which is kind of cool.

Is the corpse explode for banners node good? Yes, but I think it's total overkill if you're doing regular things. But if you're REALLY sitting there doing a ton of Ultimatum, Simulacrum, or other circle leagues, it's justifiable for sure.


Do you have a Twitch? No.

What's the size of the banner AoE? I've just picked one off of Lilly and it seems tiny. This is what banners look like at max level, passives, and NO other investment. With other AoE scaling depending on your character's setup, even without linking inc. AoE. banners are like 1.5 screens in radius.





Main aspirational things:

-Fortify corruption or Volatile Vaal Orb high rolling on weapons. Both are good. Corruptions can impose even greater mana burdens in Mirage league, so they might be more attractive if coins do not go core. Volatile Vaal Orbs, depending on your CDR, may or may not be enough to actually cause you to gain any more warcries per second to get even more valor generation. It's an issue of diminishing returns and server ticks.
-Maybe setups with grasping mail are possible due to the high resistance total of this build? However, this is functionally impossible in SSF at present. More of a thing for 3.28 if breach returns to core.
- Gravicius body armor for 35% banner effect with a high tier non-curse aura effect implicit is a lot of damage/accuracy (great for dealing with accuracy map mod). Really hard to recombine though in SSF.
- Uber Exarch gloves after picking up Mageblood, then swap out of permanent fortify in favor of Master of Metal without having to give up -10% reduced DoT mastery or slot fortify support. This would bring me substantially more damage while still improving my durability a bit further. It does however result in unbuffed resistances, chaos namely, being harder to solve for. The easy way out is to use Mageblood and an Amethyst flask, but I might need to recraft some rares to rebalance stats to keep my 5th flask slot as more of a wildcard.

Reserving second post in case I have some expansion of these thoughts and want to detail them.

cue is a rat

excellent build friend

hey great pob, one small optimization you can make is side with oak to get +40 life and drop the +30 life mastery

Can you just touch on leveling a little bit? Or maybe add a section in the POB or the guide?

Other than that fantastic explanation and logic very interested and will probably start this

How do we handle ailments like ignite chill and shock

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leegeyerburnest#1005 님이 작성:

Can you just touch on leveling a little bit? Or maybe add a section in the POB or the guide?

Other than that fantastic explanation and logic very interested and will probably start this

Not too much to touch on here. Level however you like to. I'm not a speedrunner for leveling, and I think leveling is more fun if I can do it with the identity of hte build I'm working toward in mind, so I'm just building out this passive tree as I go. I'm sure you could do the usual Sunder leveling and switching over if you like speedrunning your leveling.

I have a low level test character at the moment and it feels fine for leveling in HC. Again, definitely not a speedrunning build, but it does start to take on its form and mechanics while leveling, which I find a lot of joy in.

Amazingly well-written and thought out!

Just wanted to say *be-all end-all not end all be all :) very commonly mixed up

"

leegeyerburnest#1005 님이 작성:

How do we handle ailments like ignite chill and shock

Freeze is handled by flasks early as usual, then pantheon. Later, Ancestral Vision with at least one active banner can be one solution. Stormshroud is another. Making ailment immunity boots in conjunction with avoidance on the tree (and through essence modifiers) is also yet another option.

Shock is a real danger for me in HC, so that's why I have some crafted modifiers that reduce shock and will be using the -shock minor Pantheon until I have a more permanent solution deeper into progression.

Also, until permanent passive avoidance is secured on the character, we can purge ailments by summoning banners.

Awesome tree setup! I wanted to play this archetype in softcore and all I found were some heist trees. Has anyone played this with Awe and Terror? "Also cause" usually means it applies to the base effect meaning it should always be guaranteed 10% explode even with a single banner. The increased AoE is possibly a burden for keeping valour up while zooming and this doesn't have much %phys so I dunno how it would play.

Impossible Escape Eternal Youth to grab the 72% warcry CDR from deep breaths wheel would let you anoint Sovereignty or something else instead. Maybe not attainable in HC trade. That would take passive valour from 14.6 to 17.5 from my napkin. I don't know if that much warcry CDR is even necessary for circle mechanics. You'd have 2 full ones up by the time mobs spawn either way or 1 full one and 2 partials. Dread Banner might be the lowest priority I suppose.

It's gonna be fun to play around with. Fire pen ring with phys to fire might be the endgame play because it's like a 5x damage multi.

P.S. I saw that the small node between the two banner nodes gives another 5% increased aura effect which is a nice bonus.