[3.25 READY] Versatile Combatant Impale Shield Crush - Crush the Atlas - SSF Compatible

Second video (first Eater of Worlds) added to Videos.

Added first bosses video (Infinite Hunger + Black Star) to the Videos. As I get to other bosses, I will be adding them in time.

I swapped out of Lacerate because I didn't like the poor Single Target and went back to Shield Crush after gathering a few uniques to use in the private league I'm in (Carnage Heart and Prismatic Eclipse). It feels pretty good so far as a starter, and I levelled using Shield Crush just fine. I didn't want to spend gold to respec my character into Shield Crush, so I just made another character instead.

This Shield Crush build is intended as a starter build for all types of players, including those brand new to the game.

This build can currently scale into a character that can reasonably do all endgame content (ubers w/ investment and practice) utilizing easy to get gear, reliable scaling, and good amounts of safety. This build is also SSF friendly to an extent, as almost all gear can be easily crafted on your own as long as you can get the resources. Most Uniques are easy to obtain, but there are a few on the endgame push that are simply better to trade for.

This build is comprehensive and breaks down nearly every aspect of the build including mechanic breakdowns, progression notes, crafting steps to make your own endgame gear, examples of gear that you should be aiming for, and video demonstrations of bosses.

Ubers can be done with this build, but it will take investment and knowledge of the fights to do the hardest content in this game. I would personally recommend making a second character if you want a character to farm/kill uber bosses if you need the experience.

3.25 Black Star + Infinite Hunger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EuZlW_q6PY

3.25 Eater of Worlds Voidstone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu1pzIhULFU

These PoBs are built around baselines on what your character should look like at certain points of the game and assumes 0 chaos resistance + maxed elemental resistances (for the safe of showing eHP). Listed affixes on gear are general recommendations - fill with resistances and such as you see fit. You can also add more damage with open affixes as well - it's all pretty open so you know what is available to adjust on your character.

The selections for damage are NOT minmaxxed, and there are additional things that can be thrown down such as banners or Berserk. Molten Shell is also disabled.

3.25 PoB (Slayer Precise Technique): https://pobb.in/EO10n5iqoUc-

Shield Crush is a bit unique compared to other skills. With Shield Crush, you are aiming to double dip on the shield cone damage for more dps. The outside cones still do decent damage, and as your damage and aoe increase, it'll easily wipe out packs without the need of any sort of corpse explosion or explode on death.

+ Easy, Effective League Start to get off the ground (only need a ~1750 armor shield to swap)
+ All content viable (Ubers doable but need skill/investment)
+ Tanky with lots of ways to keep your defense up (Versatile Combatant Max Block, Armor, Endurance Charges, Vaal Molten Shell, Evade, etc)
+ SSF Friendly. Required Uniques are very easy to obtain. No difficult to acquire Uniques required until you want to heavily invest.
+ Fast mapping and mobility utilizing Leap Slam (or Shield Charge).
+ Offensive, Defensive, and Flask Flexibility.

- Not a one button build (Shield Crush, Blood Rage, Leap Slam, Berserk, Banner, etc.)
- We must level with Sunder before swapping into Shield Crush.
- Heavier respec to shield crush than average to ensure smooth levelling / early mapping.
- Accuracy / Max life balancing to keep Precise Technique buff in effect.
- Average Bossing speed (we do not insta-phase pinnacle bosses).
- Reduced block chance modifier maps are dangerous (but doable).
- Little hotbar space because of multiple buttons

Precise Technique:
Precise Technique gives us a whopping 40% more damage at the cost of using some gear affixes to hit the breakpoint.

Fortification:
We use Fortification for damage reduction, and end up getting about 22% less damage taken after passives. Due to the Fortify passive mastery, we get this with Fortify at the cost of roughly 5 skill points. At endgame, we will use Fortify Support instead of 5 skill points.

Lifetap:
We utilize Lifetap to bypass needing mana for most things. This also gives us slightly better life from flasks. As we get later into the build, we can drop Lifetap for more damage as our mana pool won't be a problem anymore.

Block:
Our main source of defense. We block the hit, we take no damage. We also get the ability to ignore enemy physical damage reduction on block.
We get up to 68% block (70 in some cases) and 65% spell block through Versatile Combatant on Slayer with zero investment on gear. It's all on the passive tree.

Armor:
Armor is our big defensive tool while mapping. Paired with our shield, we can get to around 30k with flasks once they are automated via 'gain charges on getting hit' and 'use when charges are full'.

Evasion:
Evasion lets us evade attacks through a % chance, which works well alongside Block. We get to roughly 40% evade chance due to using an armor/evasion shield later on, which is a little bit more natural defense in our build without much opportunity cost.

Impale:
Impale is our best scaling option with Shield Crush, and the double hit lets us stack and apply Impale much faster. Since we have high attack speed with Shield Crush as well, it also has a natural synergy.

Attack Speed:
In tandem with above, Attack Speed gives us faster Leap Slam movement, faster shield hits, and faster Impale triggering when we attack.

Leech:
We use leech as our primary life (and mana) sustain. We get our leech through Jewels, Cluster Jewels, Gloves, Rings, or the passive tree. Since mana isn't as much of a problem for us (more details are in the 'gem' section), it is not as important.

Rage:
Rage is a new easy mechanic that we can use to get %more attack damage. In some places we get up to 36, while in most cases we get to 30. This falls off if we stop attacking / stop getting hit, but its relatively easy to obtain even in bosses.

Stance Skills:
Stance skills are used in this build. The general rule of thumb is Blood Stance is for damage, while Sand Stance is for safety. Flesh and Stone has been changed for enemies to take x% more damage in blood stance, and they deal x% less damage in sand stance. This is a VERY powerful skill for melee and this build.

War Banner:
Banner skills have been reworked, and they now gain charges by getting kills or hitting things with melee skills. Place the Banner down, and get a good damage boost. It's very straight forward.

Key:
(20/X) = Level/Quality. If you see X on quality, it can be whatever quality.

Our Ascendancy that we run is Slayer.

Slayer is used because of the overleech, 20% cull, and built in aoe gains during maps. We also have better damage when close to a target, which we normally use for bosses.

Skill Order:
Brutal Fervor > Bane of Legends > Impact > Headsman

Brutal Fervor - Lots of reliable leech and overleech during the acts. This will make the acts feel much safer.

Bane of Legends - More damage against bosses. Bosses can start to feel a little beefy around Act 8/9 (Arakaali onwards).

Impact - Accuracy, area of effect and more damage when enemies are closer. This is a big reason we can run Precise Technique.

Headsman - Movement Speed, Attack Speed, and Culling by the time we hit maps. Mapping feels much better with this.

Help Oak. We want the flat life. If you'd rather the passive point for any reason, then Kill All.

MAJOR:
Soul of Solaris - We use this primarily for bossing and for the critical strike node. No extra damage from critical strikes if you've taken one recently is a godsend for juiced maps.

Honorable Mentions:
Soul of Arakaali - Big Bossing (Maven, Sirus, etc)
Soul of the Brine King - Freeze Immunity with the secondary passive you get with a divine vessel.

MINOR:
Soul of Shakari - More DOT and Chaos Damage mitigation

BANDITS:
Primary: Kill All - We need the passive points.