[3.11] Build Showcase - Sword and Board Lightning Wild Strike Slayer

As I am about done with league, I thought I would do a brief build showcase on my character this season. I posted this on the Reddit forum and thought I would share it here too.

This is not a build guide per se but could be used as an example of what can be done.

POENinja Profile: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/TheRealWildborn/Jarovit_the_Sower?i=8&search=name%3Djar%26dps%3DWild-Strike

Note this is my end of league build, and in my view has has a relatively high budget. I did league start this and will list my item progression below for cheaper alternatives. I also did not chase perfect T1 life rolls and realize there are areas that can be improved.

POB: https://pastebin.com/vnqRR5Qy

Game play Highlights: Here are a few highlight videos to show the play-style, clear-speed and dps all on A8:

Wave 20 Simulacrum: https://youtu.be/uLvG9_FMZ7A

Drox Kill: https://youtu.be/Ee0o6fDMDiY

Random Minotaur run: https://youtu.be/Z1dEyNOOG18

Background and Character Development Story: I wanted to play a lighting character this season, and decided on Wild Strike. I also have never played a Slayer seriously before. I originally had visions of being a dual wielding leaching monster rocking a savior and high DPS foil combo based on excellent raider videos from:

FastAF here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ji6ahnhVps

Path of Exile Builds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scbp_CDI9PY

It was interesting to note that I could not find any recent slayer guides for the wild strike skill.

As this was my league starter, quickly decided notable gems would not be the way to go, particularly as they were near impossible to get at the beginning of the league. Also since I was not a raider, I did not want to go evasion based defense, which led me to armor stacking.

Wild Strike was easy to level with, and I was able to pick up both my combat focus gems within the first three hours of play making me a lightning chaining machine. The story mode was super smooth. I also picked up dual ichimonji and a cheap enchanted helm with +6 chains on wild strike which allowed me to blast into yellow maps.

It was at that time, I almost scrapped the build and rerolled. In yellow maps I started to die a lot, I was getting one shot, over and over. The build felt bad. I clawed my way from level 86-90 and hated it. I decided that Raider must of been the obvious choice as melee is too squishy and will never be able to take a hit. Surely the content posting gods I mentioned above knew something I did not. I quit for a weekend and did my season quest in D3, needless to say, I was in a bad state.

After a weekend of D3, I realized that I hated that more, and came back to this toon. I ultimately decide that my life pool was too low, and my armor was too low. So goodbye to dual wield, hello Lionseye Glare! 180 HP on a shield, tons of armor and into red maps I went.

I was then able to pick a pretty cheap Paradoxia with elemental pen and crit multi which had my damage spike way up. I eventually saved up 4 ex and bought a 6 link Loreweave which was a large DPS and defense boost. I also anointed disciple of unyielding for endurance charges.

I was rockin and making currency until about A5 around level 92. Then I hit a wall again, I could not survive Baran and redeemer hits. Defenses were not strong enough, DPS still too low and my Chaos res was too low.

It was at this point, Harvest started making sense to me. I finally made the effort to really setup a garden (thanks Redit posters for the templates) and looked at what I could make. My first craft was my amulet, then I learned about forcing mods and realized all lighting mods on a ring gives me conductivity curse on hit (this might feel simple now, but at the time I felt like I discovered the secret to magic itself!).

Thereafter, I had this idea for a shield that would help me max my physical reduction and get me phat armor for Molten Armor. I found a two endurance charge warlord influenced colossal tower base forced the physical reduction mod, added chaos res and went to work on the defense. Physical damage was no longer an issue.

I also had the idea that even more clear speed can be obtained with the extra strike hunter gloves plus tribal fury on the tree. These gloves made clearing mobs super great. 3 attacks (multi-strike) * 14 chains (8 from skill 6 from enchant) * 3 targets (normal attack, tribal fury and extra strike) = a possible 126 chains! Reality is things never live that long, but super fun, see wave 20 above as an example.

The rest of the story is less interesting, as now I am A8, blowing up maps and generating currency. I went from maybe 2-3 Million DPS at that time to my current state. Awakened Gems added a ton of damage, my explody chest gave permanent power charges (don't get much from the explosion other than removing death effects), better flasks such as bottled faith, and upgraded helm with -9 lighting resists.

All in all, I have cleared almost all content with this guy (except have not found a delve boss and Uber Atziri's reflect sucks) and I am at a point he can peacefully find his way to standard to collect dust with my pages and pages of stash tabs that I refuse to sort.
Thanks for reading this far. PM me if you have questions.

Gearing Suggestions:

Weapon: Ichimonji-->Paradoxia--> High DPS Paradoxia with blind on hit

Shield: Lionseye Glare--> Crafted shield with mods you like
Armor: Random Corrupted 6 link with appropriate socket color with high life/resists, ---> loreweave ---> harvest explody something

Helmet:---> any rare with 6 chain wild strike enchanted helmet ---> enchanted ilvl 85 crusader influenced armor based helmet with -9 resists, I also very much like the increase fortify effect.

Belt: Stygian Vise with resits and life

Rings: Circle of regret with mana reserve and lighting damage + Curse ring with lighting hit damage + assassin mark or conductivity

Amulet: High life and lighting hit damage --> crusader amulet with - lighting resists, multi crit, high life

Gloves ---> rare with Life and resists----> spiked gloves with strike additional target.

Boots----> rare with life and resists ----> Tailwind boots

Note: accuracy is a struggle, you can either get accuracy in one suffix and take impact ascendancy (my current spec) or drop aspect of the spider and max precision. The latter will allow you to take the bane of legends ascendancy for that sweet 20% culling strike. At my current DPS level I decided the culling strike was pointless and kept aspect of the spider.

Very inspiring to read!

Will definitely consider to league start with this build instead of other impale melee stuff, as weapon of choice is not so expensive and easy to find, instead of crafting a 400dps foil which is problematic for league start.

Digging this build thus far just thought id let OP know its def good!