(3.8) Vaal Breakfast - VIN, VBV, HoI Proliferate, 100% Legions, All Content Viable

Path of Building Pastebin (aka just show me the build already!)

https://pastebin.com/Zx2HejY4

Why Vaal Breakfast

Pros:

* Easy to get into, low requirements to start, Can probably start blowing up glaciers on a budget of like 20~25 chaos, then self fund and cyclically upgrade.
* High top end for gear, plenty of nice pricey upgrades can really push this build to some impressive heights for DPS and survivability
* One/Two shot Legion encounters
* Extremely considerable single target damage
* Incredibly fun and very fast

Cons:

* Suffers a bit from piano finger syndrome, as this build leans heavily on multiple 'temporary buff' effects from flasks, Vaal Righteous fire, etc to pop legions and bosses.
* It might get nerfed at some point as GGG realizes the proper call is to slap "Cannot inflict Freeze" onto Herald of Ice. Here's hoping they let us have our fun for at least a league or two though :p

LEAGUES VAAL BREAKFAST HAS BEEN ALLOWED TO EXIST: 2

Why the name?

'Eggs' or 'Breakfast' was a really fun, kind of complicated deck I love(d) to play in Magic the Gathering. This build uses three Vaal Skills together in harmony to pull off some silly shenanigans, so it felt fitting. Also, I just like the way it sounds.

Hows it work

There are three distinct pieces at play in Vaal Breakfast

* Herald of Ice Proliferation
* Blade Vortex + Vaal Blade Vortex
* Vaal Ice Nova

We use Hatred and phys>Cold conversion for Blade vortex, which results in all three of these skills conveniently scaling off mostly the same types of damage where it counts, but to really make it easy, we are playing assassin and mostly scale our damage via crit chance and crit multi.

Herald of Ice Prolif

Back before the Beacon of Ruin nerf, Elementalist had some fun interactions with a series of specific skill combos that enabled them to chain Herald of Ice explosions across packs, meaning killing just 1 monster in a pack proceeded to delete the whole pack.

Tonnes of fun, but it got nerfed.

Well. It's back baby. This time we pull the trick off in a much less silly and much less indirect way. How? Simple, we make Herald of Ice have a 100% crit chance, and do enough damage to one shot trash. Or at least 1~3 shot trash.

This is tricky, because Herald of Ice actually has a base crit chance of 0%, so we need a decent chunk of +% base crit chance.

Luckily, Assassin's Deadly Infusion passive gives us +2% base. We also use Critical Strikes support for another 1.9%, and finally Farrul's Bite for an additional 1%.

Theoretically we can also use a Hatred Watchers eye for another 1~2%, which totals us up to 5% base crit chance, or about 7% with a good hatred watchers eye.

Second, Assassin's 'Ambush and Assassinate' Passive grants us 100% more crit chance vs full life monsters, so we actually only need to pull off 50% or so with Herald of Ice. With 7 power charges, thats not too hard to hit.

The result is a respectable damage Herald of Ice that also has a very very high chance to freeze on hit (100% with perfect gear and hatred watcher's eye), which will proceed to also kill that monster and chain the beautiful explosions you can see in my gif above.

Vaal Ice Nova
This skill pretty much speaks for itself. Scaling our HoI above encourages us to take tonnes of Area of Effect everywhere we can get it, which conveniently synergizes well with Vaal Ice Nova. This skill we already know is amazing for popping Legion encounters, so it pretty much speaks for itself.

(Vaal) Blade Vortex

The final piece of the puzzle that brings it all together. Blade Vortex is some of the best single target Spell damage in the game, and it also scales well with the other two abilities above. Vaal Blade Vortex also provides some amazing burst damage for burning down bosses, and we should be able to pull into the 3mil shaper dps realm with top end gear and three Vaal Blade Vortexes up at the same time.

Passive Trees

Bandits: Kill all, or Help Kraitlyn. Kill all = more damage, Kraitlyn = More Move speed and more dodge, so its a bit more mobile.

Level 70 tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.7.5/AAAABAYBAAQHBbUHHgj0DdEOSA-rEJIRlhNxFVYWQBZvFr8XLxewGYoajxvIHMQdFB9BH0wgbiHAIuojNiSLJKomlS0fMHEyATIyNj026TmZOkI6WElRSotLeEyzUDBTEFXGVdZYrl6lYeJjQ2TnZp5qQ2yMbRltbH_GgKSCHoPbhX2Nv49GlSCVLpeVl_SboZ2qoqOkBayYsNiyGbMOuQK8b7zqwfPDOsgTylnPetAf0UXSxdQj2YbbC92o42rjhOjW7-vw1fba99f60vsJ_vk=

(Need an Efficient Training jewel in the Witch Socket)

Level 80 Tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.7.5/AAAABAYBAAQHBbUHHgj0DdEOSA-rEJIRlhNxFVYWQBZvFr8XLxewGYoajxvIHMQdFB9BH0wgbiHAIuojNiSLJKomlS0fMHEyATIyNj026TmZOkI6WD1fSVFKi0t4TLNQMFJTUxBVS1XGVdZYrl6lYeJh62KsY0Nk52aeakNsjG0ZbWx6U3_GgKSCHoPbhMWFfY2_j0aVIJUul5WX9Juhm7WdqqKjpAWsmLDYshmzDrkCvG-86sHzwzrIE8pZz3rP3dAf0UXSxdQj2YbbC92o42rjhOjW7-vw1fGK9tr31_rS-wn--Q==

Level 90 tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAYBAJuhCPQN0VH7WfOUb7zq-wmio_fX44RsjCaVOkIVVmZUm7WExe_rSosfQQ5IIzZVS0lR3aiVLrkCz3qzDn_GnaoaOAQHpAX22pBVUDCw2ONqS3gyMmNDG8gTcTBxUlNYrsHzIcAcxB0UFm_NFtmGakMWQBCSYqwXL4V9bWwfGLIZVcaVIBmKF7DRRS0f0sXxisM6yBNh63pTj0Yajwceylkki5eVz91h4oPbIuq8bw-rgKQWvySqcg82PWTnMgEgblXWUxAfTF6ll_T60jpYOZkRlicv1CNtGQW12wtmnqyY6Nb--TbpTLM9X9Af8NWNv4Ie

Note: If you're base stats are too low for pieces of gear, you can temporarily use Alacrity, Physique, Prowess, or Thief's Craft for quick stat boosts to meet gear reqs


Gear Guides

(Linking of items to come)
(Any unmentioned item slots are just standard Life+Resist Rares. Move speed on boots, the usual stuff. You may need a Strength or Dex Amulet early on as you complete your tree.

Budget Gear starter pack


Budget Gear Skill Links


Medium Tier Gear


Medium Tier Skill Links



Premium Tier Gear



Premium Tier Skill Links



Top Tier Gear



Usage Guide
This part of the guide will cover key techniques to speed up and maximize your clear optimization and Glacers per Hour!

Weapon Swap Trick
I like to put on 2x Fidelitas' Spike and/or Brightbeaks with Attack Speed Corruptions on my offhand weapons, and socket in Leap Slam + Attack Speed + Culling strike in one, and Portal + Faster Casting + Enhance in the other.

This will allow you a quick weapon swap to VERY rapidly cross distances (useful if you're out of flasks, or you need to cross some gaps, IE Lab Runs)

This also serves a second purpose though, because we have Blade Vortex socketed into our main weapon, when you weapon swap it will clear away all of your blade vortex stacks.

This is critical, as if you pop a Legion encounter with Blade Vortex up, you will pretty much always delete the nearby enemies. This is bad, because now Vaal Ice Nova will often whiff and miss, because there arent enough close by enemies for it to chain off.

So, walk up to the glacier and weapon swap twice to quickly clear off your blade vortex stacks!

Order of Operations

When popping the legion encounter, there is a specific order of operations to using your flasks and abilities to maximize clear.

1. Atziri's Promise

2. Dying Sun

3. Soul Catcher

4. Vaal Righteous Fire

5. Vaal Ice Nova (boom)

6. Life Flask (to heal back the damage Vaal RF just did to us)

I would recommend organizing your abilities and flasks in a way that feels sensible to you, but mostly its just a matter of practicing piano'ing your abilities in this order and getting the feel for it.

As soon as you do this, quickly look and see if there is the aura indicating a boss. Pop Quicksilver Flask + Phase run and zoom over and throw up 1~2 Vaal Blade Vortex's, then right away start running back to the monolith. Your VBV's should down the boss right around the time you get back to the monolith, and the encounter will pop right on time!

I am struggling to 100% wipe out legions consistently

Its normal for about 33% of the time to just not 100% wipe the legion, generally because 1 guy got missed in a corner. It happens.

One trick you can do is, after you wipe out the legion and the time remains (meaning one rando is probably alive kicking somewhere) is just pop phase run asap, and throw a Vaal Blade Vortex in one direction, then the other.

Vaal Blade Vortex acts as kind of a homing missile and will seek out that straggler. Sometimes. It's still not guaranteed but it helps a lot!

Also, make sure you clear out trash mobs in the nearby vicinity when you pop. They can soak up your Vaal Ice Nova chains (remember it only chains 5 times!), and make you miss the back rows.

Basically though, if you're timer failed to pop and you missed a monster or two, just pop phase run and do a quick look around, just aim to get back to the monolith before the timer is up. Sometimes you get lucky and find the dude and can vaal blade vortex him away and quickly zoom back to the monolith.

Crafting your GG staff

So you've farmed your glaciers, you've got exalts in the bank, and you want to take your build to the next level right?

Alright, so lets make our ultimate staff.

To begin, we need a blue staff with the 40% reduced vaal skill soul cost:

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Legion/9GoB4RfK

The next step is to perform a rotation of beast crafts and Regal+Annul.

Buy a Craicic Chimeral ( https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Legion/mvJZnaH6 ) which unlocks the "create an imprint of a magic item" beastcraft recipe.

Do that on your precious staff, and save that imprint for later. This will allow us to roll back the staff to its original state if we mess things up.

Now you have two options, one is much cheaper and produces a slightly weaker staff, or there is the MUCH more expensive route that will produce a slightly better staff. Proceed with caution.

Cheap Route

This route is simple. Regal the staff, and if it isnt a T1 mod from the following pool:

* Increased Cold Damage
* Increased Spell Damage
* Increased Cast Speed (Optional, the crafted Cast Speed + Arcane Surge on kill is arguably much stronger)

Then Annul it. If you Annul off the Vaal Soul Skill cost, use your imprint on the item to roll it back, and go back to step 1 again.

If you succeed, craft on the following mods:

=Prefixes=
* % increased Spell Damage + Gain % of Non-Chaos Damage as extra Chaos Damage
* Gain % of Cold Damage as Extra Chaos Damage
* +2 to level of socketed support gems

=Suffixes=
* Can have multiple Crafted Modifiers
* % increased Cast Speed + % chance to gain Arcane Surge when you Kill an Enemy

Congrats on your absolute beast of a Vaal Breakfast staff!

The expensive route, AKA "I have exalts to burn"

This is basically the same process as above, however, we wont be using as many annuls.

Instead:

1. Create imprint

2. Use an Orb of Augmentation to add a second blue affix, instead of a regal. If it is not one of the following:

* Increased Cold Damage (T1)
* Increased Spell Damage (T1)
* Increased Spell Damage + # to maximum Mana (T1)

Then Annul it. If you annul off the Vaal Soul cost, use up your imprint and go back to step 1. Otherwise, go back to step 2 and try Orb of Augmenting it again.

Once you succeed and now have a T1 stat AND Vaal soul cost...

3. Create an imprint again (make sure you dont mix it up with the old imprint now! This imprint has TWO stats on it now!)

4. Regal orb the staff, once again hoping for another of those T1 mods from the list above.

5. This time however, if it fails, you either will want to make one of the following two choices:

A. If Craicic Chimerals cost < 1.2 ex: Use the imprint and go back to step 3

B. If Craicic Chimerals cost > 1.2 ex: Annul the staff, with a 33% chance to succeed at annulling off the garbage stat, then Ex Slam it and repeat step 5. If you remove off a T1 stat, just use the imprint and go back to step 3.

Finally, once you succeed you will craft on the following, and end up with:

=Prefixes=
* % Increased Cold or Spell Dmg (T1)
* % Increased Spell Dmg + # to maximum mana (T1)
* +2 to Support Gems (Crafted)

=Suffixes=
* % reduced Soul Cost of Vaal Skills (T1)
* Can have multiple Crafted Modifiers (Crafted)
* % increased Cast Speed + % chance to gain Arcane Surge when you Kill an Enemy (Crafted)

This staff should net you about 10~12% more damage compared to the Budget one, but will cost like 10x the exalts. Good luck exile!

===============================================================

More info to come! Let me know if you have any questions!

<Reserved>

Hey there,

i am trying this build also. I respeced my Autobomber Assassin to your Assassin. I liked the playstyle of the autobomber, but was not efficient enough for clearing Legions as fast as possible.

Here is my stuff, that I am using now:



I will skip the Atziri's Aquity upgrade, because I think I will stay in Glacier with this build.

I still need to much time to clear the Legions. Would be nice, if you could make a short "How to clear the Legion" Guide Video. Where you explain, which Skill you use in which moment. I am still struggeling with the right combination of Flasks and Vaal Skills.

And yes, the build is already quite expensive. But the return from the Legions is worth it. Just the Staff was 7ex (6L + Reduced Soul Cost) + Multi Mod (2ex) + Spell damage (1ex) + +2 to socketed gems (2ex) = 12ex. My next investment today will be 21/23 Vaal Blade Vortex.

I'm still thinking about the Hatred Watcher's Eye, but i don't think that it's necessary at this point for me.

What I don't like with this build is, that it does not use a movement skill. Maybe i will change the Phase Run for Flame Dash.

Also, I am thinking about to change the PCoC gem to IncAoE in the Ice Nova setup. I will try this, if it is still finde. The same with the HoI setup.

And yes, the build is fun to play. It's similar to an Autobomber. The first mob that hits one of the blades of the Blade Vortex makes the mob pack explode. That's nice.

Good work with this build. Not mainstream. I like.

Peez

Hey Imbi55_Br0nk0, thanks for your feedback! Its greatly appreciated!

I added some "usage" notes to the bottom of the guide, giving tips on how to use the build optimally, I'll add more as they come to me (at this point Im sitting at around 6,000 glaciers plus, so a LOT of this stuff has become muscle memory at this point)

So right now it looks like The Grey Spire has skyrocketed in price, and doesn't look to be coming down any sooner, so my recommendation for an alternative budget staff will be one that has any of, from highest priority to lowest:

* % increased Ice Damage
* % increased Spell Damage
* +1 Socketed Gems (massive BV dps boost with empower)
* % Increased Global Crit Multi
* % Increased global crit chance
* % increased cast speed
* Open Prefix so you can craft on +2 socketed support gems later (optional)

Aim for one with a global crit chance implicit as well.

"

to the thread author getting 40% reduce soul cost is cost prohibitive at this point...Bloodstained fossils are 4.5 Ex! (Streamer TAX)

Id recommend buying pre-made staves with that mod, there are plenty of individuals selling blue staves with just that mod, and you can beast craft one up.

I'll add a "Crafting your ultimate staff" guide as well, it will run you about 15ex to make the staff but it nets you WAY faster clear speed and makes end game T16 maps viable to farm.

My current loadout on my main:









And in my weapon swap:



Gotta go fast.

Saving up for Atziri's Acuity next and I should be very Shaper viable!

For all intents and purposes, this build is fully functional still for 3.8!

Im kind of double checking the skill tree, but as far as I can tell it pretty much is still the same as 3.7

Being able to one shot legion encounters is still an incredibly lucrative asset to have and absolutely is worth building for even in 3.8

This build can still do all content, should function quite wonderfully in Blight (since you can pre-charge Blade Vortex between waves of monsters), and even encountering legions 10% of the time is lucrative when you can 100% wipe them out.

I will be investigating the profitability of running Legion Scarabs, I strongly expect them to be extremely worth spamming on maps.

Yes.

I think Glacier farming will still be quite valid. Even after the 'nerf'

question for a scrub, is there a way to make this autobomber? like how can you make it so the hoi auto procs or bladevortex stays up or something? is it not possible? just curious would appreciate any feedback sorry for the nub question. thanks