TbXie's Splitting Steel Champion Build Guide (PoE Settlers of Kalguur 3.25)

July 22nd, 2024, 20:46

Introduction & Expectations

I expected this skill to perform a lot better than it is in your guide. Why is this?

Because it is impossible to cater to everyone, I choose to not overcomplicate things. As a rule of thumb, this means you get to be confident you can obtain your two first Voidstones, an otherwise full Atlas completion & have a great mapping experience in T16 maps with moderates amounts of juice.
This implies you will most likely be looking for some help, or further investments to obtain your last two Voidstones. This is due to the fact that fighting these bosses on acceptable amounts of gear requires an enormous amount of game knowledge, fight practice & mechanical skill. Trying to compare your playing experience to those who’ve done nothing but play for years, tends to lead to dissapointment.

Therefore, take your time & appreciate the fact that some content can be harder for you, and the characters powerlevels you’ve managed to acquire, than for others. There’s no shame in this.

Disclaimer

I am currently playing the new Challenge League and a lot of things have been added of which no mention can be found in this guide?

While I would very much like to give you all the ins and outs of the new powercreep in the new Challenge League, it saddens me to let you know that no Early access is given out and we thus have no more information than anyone else when updating our build guides before the new patches. We try our utmost to make sure everything is as close to perfect as we can, but cannot forecast which special mechanics / interactions might exist in new Leagues. If something of tremendous power is teased or announced beforehand, you can find specific League specific remarks in the section on the GEAR PAGE

What to Expect

🔸 T16 Maps ✔️
🔸 T16 Maps w/ a few Atlas Mechanics or some scarabs ✔️
🔸 Pinnacle bosses when playing well ✔️
🔸 T17 Maps ✔️
🔸 Uber Content ❌
🔸 Uber Content when investing well beyond the guide ✔️

Splitting Steel

Splitting Steel is a very interesting gem. However, because of it’s mechanics, and some introduction of certain enablers, it’s currently one of the best & most enjoyable skills in the game. It enables a well-rounded beast to be played and as such this guide was created.

Playstyle

This build plays something like a mix of both a ranged caster & a melee build. You are attacking but your coverage & clear makes it feel like you’re cheating a bit. Because of mechanics with projectile skills, you’ll be a cannon firing of a million projectiles everywhere creating satisfying moments of complete domination.

Build Assessment

Pro’s & Con’s

➕ Relatively Fast Playstyle
➕ Has Everything Available to Him to Tackle all Content
➕ Very solid well-rounded Leaguestarter

➖ Balancing Armour / Evasion can be tricky
➖ Requires Melee Playstyle on Bosses to do maximum Damage
➖ Relies on a few Uniques to get maximum Potential

Viability in Numbers

🔸 Ease of Transitioning: ★★★★★
🔸 New Player Friendliness: ★★★★☆
🔸 Playstyle: ★★★★☆
🔸 Ease of Gearing: ★★★☆☆
🔸 Easily Executable: ★★★☆☆

Map Modifiers to Avoid

While certain combinations of modifiers are generally just bad, such as for example a couple of damage modifiers combined with Critical Strike Multiplier, these are things you are supposed to get a feel for yourself and test out. Just make sure not to combine too much crazy things together. Modifiers the build cannot run are listed here.

❗No Leech
❗Physical Damage Reflect

Damage & Defenses

Mechanics

There are a few important mechanics we should be discussing here. Firstly, the build introduces a Corrupting Fever gem which you should be popping regularly to enable Champion’s Adrenaline Mastery. Additionally, because of the mechanics surrounding Returning Projectiles, you need to understand that you should be playing close to the boss to make sure you optimize all of your Damage. Other than that, outside of the fact that the build uses Lifetap Support on all its skills to avoid having to deal with mana, the mechanics are all fairly straight forward.

Scaling & Layers

This build layers a lot of unconditional mitigation to reduce incoming damage. These layers are combinations of following attempts to avoid taking relevant hits:

🔸High Chance to Evade Attacks
🔸High Amount of Armour
🔸Capped Spell Suppression
🔸High (Instant) Leech
🔸Fortify
🔸Burst Regeneration
🔸Ranged Player
🔸Adrenaline

Build Resources

Leveling the Build

Leaguestarter or Transitioning

This build has the Leaguestarter tag. This means we will be holding your hand right from the get go until you reach the pinnacle of your power and finish the guide. In order to maximize your experience, please make sure to follow the Path of Building leveling sections accordingly. We will be providing multiple skill trees & gem sets to ease your progress to endgame maps.

You can find the Path of Building link on the Path of Building Page .