[3.15] Elemental Hit Ballista Totem Hiero | Budget Friendly | League Start to Endgame

Copy paste my helm's data into POB's Create Custom Item for a rough idea on how it is for you.

PoB doesn't automatically take Exposure into account, so you can check for Exposure's benefit by adding a Megalomaniac with the 'Master of Fire' Notable to the tree, and see how much you gain from that notable.

For me, I get +24.2% DPS from the helmet and then another +9% from the Notable.

The helmet has three prefixes that increase the gem level of Elemental Hit (and free pierce!) which we obtain from Betrayal's unveil and craft system.

To allow multiple crafts, we need the "Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers" or MultiMod from Prophecy's Pale Court fight.

The two suffixes are strong boosts to the damage as well, the 30% more Elemental Damage coming from Essences and the Hypothermia support coming from Shaper's Influence modpool.

Aside from the minor gain of 20% chill effect, this helmet is pure offense. Frostferno had a good chunk of Fire and Ice Resistances and Mana Regeneration. Keep that in mind if you want to do this swap! The loss of this mana regen was fairly noticeable, if you don't have the two sources of reduced mana cost.

If you don't want to use Archdemon Crown because of the resistance drop, you can also opt for a Blizzard Crown. The implicit only offers a +1.9% DPS boost compared to Archdemon's +9% however.

1) Obtain an Archdemon Crown [or Blizzard Crown] of ilvl 80. ilvl 80 lets you have a shot at rolling for the highest tier of Hypothermia support. 80 is actually the best since higher levels add a few more mods which slightly lessen the odds in your favor.

2) Increase the quality to 20%. You can go up to 30% via Perfect Fossils or Hillock's reward in Fortification [24/26/28/30% depending on his tier]. TFT price for 30% is ~1 exalt, so you can do this yourself.

2b) If you're Fossil Spamming for 30% Quality, might as well use a Gilded Fossil for the "Item sells for much more" implicit, just to look cool ;)

3) Get your desired socket colors. Following the guide, RRRG is the ideal colors, but modifications to the build can add Green or Blue gems, so I went with getting a few White sockets. White Sockets come from Vorici in Research. TFT price is 30-40 chaos per white socket. There's a bit of RNG on what sockets turn White.

This is optional if you don't want to do those gem swaps! WWRG is the ideal, since we will always have Ballista Totem and Elemental Hit.

4) If you have a Conqueror's Exalted Orb you're willing to waste, use it on the helmet to give it an Influence. You can instead look for the cheapest type on the market (Crusader in this time of writing).

5) Use Harvest's craft of "Randomize the influence of an armor" until you find Shaper. This is the Space looking background and the Red Star icons on the item's name. TFT price is 15-20 chaos per try. Took me 9 Tries.

6) Another optional step, expensive but adds another chunk of DPS (7%) is having someone enchant the helmet with "15% increased Elemental Hit attack speed". This was the best enchant for my PoB, so your choice may vary. Lab Runner prices for an enchant varies from 3 to 15 exalts, so see who offers you a good deal.

Part A Summary - You should have a Shaper Influenced Helmet with 30% quality, a lab enchant, and good sockets.

Note: Steps 2, 3, 6 can be skipped and be done later. Just make sure you don't use fossils on an item with stats you need, since that rerolls it! If you want to increase quality later on, you need Hillock [or the beastcraft that corrupts an item for 30% quality.]

Cost for me: 450 Chaos for steps 1-5, since I was greedy for 3 white sockets. 4ex for the enchant.

This is the brutal RNG step of getting the two suffixes.

1) Use Essence of Horrors on the Helmet until you find the "Socketed Gems are Supported by Level X Hypothermia" mod. If you're happy with any tier, this can take ~18 tries. Hitting Tier 1 may take ~54 tries. Tier 1 [level 20] is roughly +3% dps compared to Tier 3 [level 16], so not too bad with settling for level 16. [Price is about 25-30 chaos per Essence, or 9 for 2 exalts at the time of crafting]

2) If you only have two suffixes, the 30% Damage mod and the Hypo mod, you're good to go to step 3!

2a) If you found that you have a third suffix, you will have to use Annulment Orbs and hope you remove that third suffix. If you aren't sure if you have suffixes or prefixes, hold Alt on the item (make sure you have advanced mod descriptions enabled). If you remove either of the good suffixes, you have to go back to step 1.

3) We remove everything else on the helmet. Craft MultiMod on the item and then "Suffixes cannot be changed". This lets you use an Orb of Scouring to remove all the prefixes on the item. Suffixes cannot be changed protects the three suffixes.

3a) If you have three prefixes and can't craft on suffixes, you can use Harvest's "Reforge an item keeping Suffixes" craft, which is about 1-2ex on TFT. Do this until you have an open prefix to do step 3.

Part B Summary - Your item should be 3 suffixes and 0 prefixes. The rest should be smooth sailing from here!

Cost for me: I needed 61 Essences in this step, for a total cost of ~1400 chaos and 2 exalts. I failed two or three attempts to annul I think, so I found the Hypo mod 3-4 times. The expensive crafts also cost me 4 ex at this point.

1) Craft "Suffixes cannot be changed" again and use Aisling's T4 research reward (obtainable by beating The Mastermind when Aisling is T3 in research). This removes a mod from your item, replacing it with a veiled mod. the SCBC protects your 3 suffixes, so that will go away. TFT Price of ~3-4 Exalts.

2) Reduce the odds of messing up by crafting +Mana and +Maximum Skeletons on the helmet. This prevents those mods from showing up when you unveil the mod.

3) Unveil. Hope you hit +2 to level of Projectile/Melee/AoE. If you fail to hit this, go back to Part B step 3 to remove the prefix.

4) Remove crafted mods, then recraft MultiMod.

5) Craft the other two mods you didn't get in Step 3.

Congratulations!

Cost for me: benchcrafts cost another 4 exalts. I did my own Aisling so I was saved from spending those 3 ex for the service.

During Part B, if you hit T1 Hypo, you can try to Elevate it with a Maven's Orb. Craft Multimod and SuffixesCantChange as usual, then use Harvest's reforge cold/caster/lightning to ensure another Shaper mod (Make sure you only have 2 Shaper mods!) Use a Maven orb for a 50-50 shot at upgrading your Hypothermia support. after that, proceed as normal with removing all prefixes.
If you fail, Essence spam again, rip.