[3.25] Ivory Tower attribute stacking LL Ice Spear CoC Inquisitor

- Radiant Faith has been heavily nerfed (from 160% of Life Reservation to 25% of Mana Reservation). This significantly reduced the power of its Forbidden Flesh/Flame jewel set. Now it's better to go Sanctuary of Thought.
- Tattoos: majority have no value as the build doesn't really want to replace any attribute nodes.
- New Support Gem: Spellblade. Adds a Battlemage effect without mentioning Battlemage. Since the build is made around this effect, the support is incredibly strong (~140% more damage) - an order of magnitude difference compared to a typical support (~40% more damage). It is so powerful I expect GGG to nerf it.

The only Tattoos that have positive effects are:
- Tattoo of the Ramako Makanga (Skills fire an additional Projectile) - there are spots for it along this build's tree but sacrificing 8 tree points in total for +1 projectile is questionable. Probably you can invest these points into core build scaling stats or Cluster Jewels and get more in return.
- Journey Tattoo of Makanui (Random Keystone) - may save 3 points required to reach Iron Reflexes
- Honoured Tattoo of the Tuatara (+4 to all Attributes) - to replace +10 Dexterity passives
- Honoured Tattoo of the Hatungo (1% increased Reservation Efficiency of Skills)
- Honoured Tattoo of the Berserker (You gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on Hit) - but the Attack Speed is not really needed
- Tattoo of the Tawhoa Makanga (Flasks applied to you have 8% increased Effect) - maybe, depending on your flask suffix mods
- Tattoo of the Kitava Shaman (4% increased Life Reservation Efficiency of Skills)
- Tattoo of the Hinekora Shaman (Regenerate 3 Mana per second)

These Tattoos are baits:
- Honoured Tattoo of the Wise (+1 to Level of all Intelligence Skill Gems) - worse than +30 Intelligence it replaces
- Honoured Tattoo of the Pa (Melee Hits Fortify) - as of writing this, the exact Fortification formula is unknown but we can be sure this build deals too low melee damage to make it work

3.23 has removed Alternate Quality Gems, Labirynth Helmet Enchants and unique Threshold Jewels and replaced them with Transfigured Gems. The effects are:
- New gems also have variants but they can function very differently, not just having a different effect from quality.
- Vast amount of gems has been rebalanced. Pretty much every changed gem has its quality effect changed from increased scaling to more scaling. As a result, quality is now significantly more valueable.
- Lab Helment Enchants are gone. Skills which relied on these have been rebalanced but may need to build slightly differently now.

Surprisingly no Spellblade nerfs.

Gem-specific changes for this build (note: these are all default gems (at 20% quality), Transfigured versions of all gems are not yet revealed):
- Ice Spear - second form projectiles now have +40% Crit Multi instead of +40% Projectile Damage. Good buff but the build loses pierce from (now gone) alternate version. Perhaps use a Charm in the new Ascendancy? I guess there will be +1/2 Pierce available.
- Cyclone - 10% more Movement Speed instead of +10% AoE. Basically the default is now a stronger version of (now gone) Divergent Cyclone. Good but likely irrelevant as most people use The Stampede which overrides Movement to fixed value of +50%.
- Energy Blade - 10% increased Crit Chance (which applied to the weapon pseudo-item and was effectively 10% more) replaced with 5% more global ES (additive with built-in 50% less ES penalty). The crit can be capped through Inquisitor's Righteous Providence alone so ... this is a buff. A pretty significant one. Now it is worth to link EB with Enhance for even more global ES.
- Purity of Elements - +40% AoE replaced with +5% to all Elemental Resistances. Basically a stronger version of previous Anomalous version (+10% local Aura Effect).
- Inspiration - +20% Inspiration Charge Duration replaced with 5% reduced Mana Cost. So the default now is a weaker version of past Divergent version.

Other, impactful change: Ultimatum replaces Metamorph, takes over Catalysts and introduces a new one: Tainted Catalyst (rolls random quality type with random value). This is a significant buff to (previously uncatalystable) Eyes of the Greatwolf.

Overall, the build is roughly in the same spot now:
- The single most significant loss is the helmet enchant, which pushes optimal attack speed increase from 29% to 48%. Fill with Watcher's Eye Precision mod, flasks and/or tree.
= Tattoos are gone but they weren't anything significant (unless you rolled IR keystone to save 3 points).
= The build lost some Alternate Quality Gems but a lot of new default gem versions are better - the only problem is obtaining Pierce which now requires annointing Piercing Shots.
+ Linking Energy Blade with Enhance is now very beneficial.
+ Eyes of the Greatwolf are buffed (Tainted Catalyst).

- Sniper's Mark slightly nerfed. Still best possible curse/mark.
- >20% Quality flasks change: now obtainable through Vaal Orb instead of Hillock.
- No more Vorici for White Sockets (there are other means though).
- Utility flasks changed from 20% less damage taken to +5% max resist. No difference at 75% resistance, a buff if you raise the cap.
- Utility flasks resistance nerfed: -20% of resist suffix (max is now only +20%), -10% on flask base (from +50% to +40%).
- The Veiled modifier that provides reduced Mana Cost of Skills during Effect can no longer be unveiled or crafted on Flasks.
- The Jewel Suffix modifier that grants 3-5% reduced Mana Cost can no longer roll.
- No more Charms (basically a nerf for vast majority of builds).
- Veiled Chaos Orb changed to Veiled Orb (Annul + Veiled slam). Will impact ring crafting.
- Tattoos are back but there is nothing particulary amazing. Just a way to micro-optimize.

Most changes ignorable, except flasks. You will need to obtain additional 30% all Elemental Resistance and be more creative with reducing Mana Cost.

3.25 is a giant balance patch (30k+ words) so I'm skipping some minor changes

Nerfs:
- Determination lvl 20: +2051 AR => +1026 AR (% more unchanged)
- Grace lvl 20: +2575 ER => +1545 ER
- Iron Reflexes is now further away, which further disincentivizes Grace+Deter+IR
- no more Attack Speed suffix on Flasks
- Banner buffs no longer permanent
- Inspiration: reduced => less (same %) (slight nerf to mana sustain)

Buffs:
- Flesh and Stone: now up to 19% less damage taken while in Sand Stance (does not scale with Aura Effect)
- Block buffed (Tempest Shield + block passives more appealing now)
- Endurance Charge will now also grant +4% Elemental Damage Reduction
- Bandits change - now Alira is tempting. 15% all res for 1 point is big. If not, continue to kill all.

Notes:
- The Quality buff (more instead of increased effect) evens out with the nerf to ease of obtaining +20% quality. So now it will be stronger but you most likely won't have 29% uniques (from Tainted Currency) - just 20%.
- The return of Kalandra's Reflecting Mist opens cool interactions for rings.
- Kalguuran Enchants do not work for Energy Blade.
- Baubles no longer obtainable from Vendors. You might want to pickup 20% quality flasks now to vendor them for Baubles.

Overall:
The most significant is the nerf to Grace+Deter+IR combo. Nothing else besides this and flasks had significant change. I don't think it is now worthy (30k instead of 50k Armour, 2 more points to reach IR) so I propose few solutions:
- Ditch Armour altogether and just invest more into Attributes/Life/ES. Replace Grace+Deter Auras with new Flesh and Stone and possibly more damage.
- Grab 2 Endurance Charges on the tree and use Ralakesh boots OR annoint Smashing Strikes OR go Grand Spectrum.
- Optionally, go block with Tempest Shield and buffed block passives.
Numerous sections in the guide have been updated.

Int and Str stacking Inquisitor utilizing multiple uniques to scale CoC Ice Spear.

Core mechanics:
- Use Ivory Tower (+30 maximum ES per 100 Reserved Life) and reserve as much Life as possible (a low-life ES build).
- Deal with Chaos Damage by having permanent Coruscating Elixir (a unique flask with Shavronne's effect).
- Sustain Coruscating Elixir by using Brutal Restraint unique Legion jewel with Balbala's Keystone (The Traitor).
- With Traitor, permanently sustain exactly 3 flasks: Ruby (Coruscating Elixir), Topaz (magic) and Sapphire (magic).
- Equip many other uniques that scale Life, ES and Attributes. This is possible thanks to 3 resistance flasks.
- Use Energy Blade skill to convert ES to a very powerful lightning weapon.
- Use Inquisitor's Ascendancy (Battlemage and attribute-based Crit Chance scaling) to utilize the weapon for CoC.
- Optimize the tree for attribute stacking - this includes Iron Will and Split Personality jewels.

Building tips:
- Do not invest into Crit Chance. The build easily caps it just from Inquisitor's Righteous Providence.
- Do not invest into Accuracy. The build easily caps it from Shaper's Touch.
- When Crit and Accuracy is capped: Strength > Intelligence. From such point onwards, Strength offers better Life+ES scaling.
- Life > ES (for both flat and % increase).

Map mods to avoid:
- elemental reflect (impossible)
no mana regen (impossible unless you want to manually use Mana Flask in 4th slot)
- anti-aura (doable but at significantly worse damage and defences)
- anti-flask (doable but you must be fast and rely on kills to refill)

Note: "buffs expire faster" is fine. This mod does not affect Flasks.

Expedition mods to avoid:
- Lightning immunity
- Attack/Spell Block
- Hits can not be Critical Strikes
- Culling Strike (kill when on 20% life or less)

And most important: NEVER FORGET to launch flasks upon entering a new zone. Always use Coruscating Elixir first (in case you are standing on Desecrated Ground).

Slots that have fixed items (no choices):

Weapon


Body


Shield


Gloves


Amulet


Slots that have choices:

Helmet


Boots


Belt


Rings


Other:

Annointment:


Flasks


Jewels - required uniques


Jewels - optional uniques


Jewels - rare


Charms (gone in 3.24)

Damage - 6L Body Armour


Core Buff - Energy Blade


Utility - offence


Utility - defence


Utlity - movement


Auras

There is no leveling tree as this build is not intended to be started from. Level with a different build and switch when you have ~90 lvl and enough currency to acquire 5L Ivory Tower, 2x Split Personality, Brutal Restraint and all cheap uniques.
You may level this build as a Hierophant (Brands or something similar). The tree has easy access to Mind Over Matter and Eldritch Battery.

If you really wanted to level, here are useful uniques:
- Sin Trek
- https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Light_of_Lunaris or any rare shield with some ES and attributes - you can craft them through Essences of Rage (which guuarantee flat str - ES shields naturally can roll only int attribute)
- Praxis (or any other Ring with -# to Total Mana Cost of Skills mod)
- Le Heup of All
- Perandus Signet

Bandit: kill all (+1 point) or help Alira (+15% Elemental Resists). If you can't reach resists through equipment or jewels (or just want other mods like Crit Multi) Alira is a great value.

Pantheon:
- Major: Solaris (defence against Physical damage) or Arakaali (defence against Chaos damage) - depends on your Chaos resist and preference.
- Minor: Ralakesh (no extra bleed damage while moving and max 5 stacks of Corrupted Blood) - the build has no flask space to deal with these and the only other place is jewel implicit mod corruption.

The tree may look point-inefficient but note that:
- This is an attribute-stacking build. +10 attribute nodes aren't treated as low value points as on other builds.
- The tree aims to create longest possible path for Split Personality jewels. With optimal jewels, each point away from the start is worth an additional +5 attribute value.

Optional tree stuff, from the start:
- Precision: in case of missing Dexterity and/or Attack Speed
- Light of Divinity and Holy Dominion: might be useful at the start to cap resists and crit. Refund later for points to spend on (much more efficient) Cluster Jewels.
- Righteous Decree: not mandatory but very useful to take to solve mana problems. Note: one of the adjacent small nodes is slightly better.
- Dynamo/Battle Rouse: for Mana Reservation Mastery (both take 3 points).
- Unwavering Stance: mandatory - you don't want to get stunned while Cycloning. We either don't care about Evasion or go Iron Reflexes.
- Champion of the Cause: Mana and Life Reservation.
- Jewel Socket near Stamina - good spot for Unnatural Instinct (16% Life + 6% all Res).
- Divine Shield: bad, even with 50k Armour.
- Devotion: good life and an increase to Consecrated Ground regen (from 5% to 6.25%)
- Arcane Capacitor: if you have mana problems.
- Zealot's Oath: allocate if you have sources of % Life regen (e.g. Golem's Blood or Consecrated Ground from Zealotry).
- +30 dex and +30 str nodes: allocate if you need to balance your attribute needs.
- From this point onwards, this part of the tree is most customizable. Individual trees differ mostly in this part.
- Melding: very good if you don't have money for 2 good non-cluster jewels.
- Throatseeker: good if you lack a lot of Crit Multi or want the mastery to increase Awakened CoC level.
- Light Eater: taken mostly for its mastery (10% instant Leech). Very good if you want fast ES recovery. Replacable with Charm mod. (gone in 3.24)
- Written in Blood: just generally good. Actually necessary if you want Light Radius.
- Soul Thief: optional but 2% ES on kill adds a ton of survivability in monster-dense encounters. Insanely good while leveling. Later replace with instant leech.

+30 Life mastery is not worth taking.

Take any nearby (2 points to spend) jewel sockets. For cluster jewels, optimal setups use 1 or 2.

Ailments
The character is already immune to Elemental Ailments because it runs Purity of Elements. This leaves only 3 significant things to deal with:
- Poison
- Bleeding
- Corrupted Blood

Poison is best dealt with by having proper Chaos Resistance. There are 2 good sources of it on this build:
- Watcher's Eye modifier
- having rings with Amethyst base: +(17-23)% Chaos Resistance
Optionally, you may select Soul of Arakaali in Pantheon powers.

Chaos Resistance
There is quite limited space in the build to acquire Chaos Resistance. Additionally, there are competing mods on Watcher's Eye: Mana Cost (Clarity) and Chaos res (Purity of Elements); I assume you always have the gain mana as ES mod (Clarity). Without Forbidden Flesh/Flame, you will have to pick a second Watcher's Eye mod as obtaining all 3 is generally unrealistic.

2x Ring with Elreon's Mana Cost mod is not enough to sustain mana. Therefore, I recommend 2 possible setups:
- 2x ring with Chaos Resistance suffix + Mana Cost Watcher's Eye
- 2x ring with Mana Regeneration suffix + Chaos res Watcher's Eye

Additional places where you can obtain Chaos Resistance:
- Searing Exarch implicit on Boots: (6-7)% on lowest tier
- Base Jewel Suffix: (7-13)%
- Abyss Jewel Suffix: (7-13)%
- Annoint Cleansed Thoughts

Corrupted Blood: unfortunately the Flask suffix mod for removing CB lessens Flask duration. This leaves the build with only 2 options:
- Having a jewel with anti-CB corruption implicit (expensive, best probably done on Brutal Restraint or some Rare one)
- Pantheon: Soul of Ralakesh (manageable if you have Zealot's Oath)

Bleeding: use Pantheon's Soul of Ralakesh which prevents character from taking extra bleed damage while moving. Having some regeneration will help aswell. Bleed damage is not reduced by Armour, but will be reduced by any other source of Physical Damage mitigation, such as Endurance Charges or Immortal Call.

Good sources of Life or ES regeneration:
- built-in ES regen mod on Ivory Tower (2%) (does not require Zealot's Oath)
- Consecrated Ground (created by Zealotry) (5%, 6.25% if you took Devotion)
- Flask syndicate mod (3%)
- Tree: Golem's Blood (1.6%)
- Tree: Sanctity (1%)

Leech
Because this build typically doesn't take Ghost Reaver (3-4 extra points needed), only ES Leech mods work. Good sources of Leech for this build:
- Spell Damage leeched as ES on the tree - small node near Eldritch Battery
- Spell Damage leeched as ES from Flask suffix modifier
- Watcher's Eye (Wrath)

Having any one of these is enough. If you are leveling and starved for other stats ignore Leech for now.

In the endgame you should have a very powerful Leech: allocate Light Eater and its mastery that makes 10% leech instant. With how frequently this build hits it will make it significantly harder to kill from non-1-shots.

Auto-equip
Disable this option in the "Game" settings. Otherwise picked up flasks will cause trouble.

Dexterity requirements
As long as you use Astramentis, there is no problem. But when you switch to Greatwolf, there will be.

How to obtain missing dexterity:
- small passives on Large Cluster Jewel
- hybrid attribute mods on Abyss and Base jewels
- +30 dex nodes on the tree
- Annoints

Ivory Tower's scaling
Exactly as the mod says, the scaling happens every 100 reserved life. No rounding, no fractions. You may see sudden spikes in damage on very small gains in Strength, Life and other statistics. This is because such points hit the next reservation threshold. Even more complication: you may see a non-spike passive that IS actually a spike passive, you just need to optimize (delevel) Arrogance to hit next reservation threshold. So if you play with adding Life in PoB don't just look on the immediate effect - check if you can delevel Arrogance after it too.

So how do we deal with this? Subtracting threshold gains from spike points (e.g. by changing Arrogance's level to simulate previous threshold) is bad as this is the best scaling mod on this build - so we do want to include it in damage calculations.

Do these things:
- Compare different passives that reach the next reservation threshold.
- Don't be fooled that a small gain (like +10 str node) is that powerful. It is only because of the threshold logic. Take it, but be aware that 1) any other method that offers similar gain (e.g. using catalysts on attribute gear) is as powerful in the given moment 2) Taking more of such source (e.g. another +10 str node) won't do much until next threshold is reached.

Cooldown Management
CoC builds need to optimize their Attack Time in order to fit nicely between server ticks, otherwise the build suffers a significant loss of its damage due to game implementation details. I won't explain it in this guide, if you don't know the theory behind it find it elsewhere or read these wiki articles:
- https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Cast_On_Critical_Strike_Support
- https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Cooldown#Server_ticks

This build aims at 14% ICRS (7.57 max trigger rate). It is easily obtainable - just level Awakened CoC to 3. 52% threshold is technically possible, but you would most likely need mirror-tier/Mageblood gear to both reach it and obtain enough Attack Speed to make use of the 10.10 trigger rate cap.

Good sources of attack speed on this build:
- Uber Lab enchant: 15% Energy Blade Attack Speed (effectively 15% more - pretty much mandatory) gone in 3.23
- Gloves corruption implicit: +(8-10)%
- Base Jewel: +(3-5)%
- Flask suffix mod: +(15-17)%
- Eyes of the Greatwolf: +(12-20)%
- Watcher's Eye (Precision): +(10-15)%

Helment enchant is gone in 3.23. The optimal Attack Speed increase (MH Inc. Att. Speed in PoB Calcs box named Attack/Cast Rate) for 7.57 trigger rate cap changed from 29% to 48%.

Mana management
A non-obvious solution to mana sustain is to use level 1 Ice Spear. You lose ~6% overall damage (skill's base damage is very low compared to the added damage) but likely release multiple tree points and gear spots which can result in eventual damage increase. Note: this works only for default Ice Spear. Ice Spear of Splitting scales splits with level and should be at least level 20 for 5 splits.

Other options:
- Tree: Righteous Decree and adjacent small passives: -16% at the cost of 4 passives
- Tree: Tireless cluster: -15% at the cost of 4 passives (they also grant Life)
- Tree: Mana mastery: -10% Mana Cost
- Tree: Hinekora Shaman Tattoo: +8% Mana Regen rate
- Rings with Mana Cost mod (Elreon's prefix): -7 (-9 with Life/Mana Catalyst if you want to sacrifice Attribute Catalysts)
- Rings with % Mana Regen (suffix, ilvl 79): up to +69%
- Watcher's Eye: Non-Channelling Skills have -(10-5) to Total Mana Cost while affected by Clarity
- 21/20 Inspiration
- Annoint Spirit Void for Mana Leech (good but you lose Annoint and can not do maps with no Leech or less Recovery)

Tattoos
- Ngamahu Firewalker/Arohongui Moonwarden/Valako Stormrider: +6% Fire/Cold/Lightning Resistance
- Hinekora Storyteller: +3% Chaos Resistance
- Ramako Archer: 5% increased Accuracy
- Hinekora Shaman: +8% Mana Regen rate

How to easily cast all Auras and Buffs
- Weapon swap to unused weapons
- Assign skills on the primary skillbar or the secondary (requires to hold ctrl) that do not come from weapon or shield
- Cast them
- Weapon swap to used weapon + shield
- Assign remaining skills on the secondary skillbar
- Cast them

Now if you die you can just:
- weapon swap
- cast auras/buffs from weapon swap skillbar
- weapon swap
- cast auras/buffs from main weapon set secondary skillbar

No more skill assignments required (unless you change equipment). Also you do not need to modify primary skillbar.

Flask-based build viability
All builds enabled by specific Flasks (such as Coruscating Elixir and Olroth's Resolve (Wardloop)) are fundamentally flawed due to existence of the Torment mechanic. Thief's Grip (only Possesed, not Touched) has an effect of removing Flask Effects on Hit. This means an often, instant death with absolutely no counterplay. Any Thief-Possessed monster will kill you immediately as long as anything nearby or this monster can deal Chaos damage.

Partial solution: allocate Speaker of the Dead Atlas passive (Torments posses players instead of monsters) (does not work outside Atlas). Elsewhere: avoid Torment mechanic as much as possible.

PoB not showing Energy Blade damage
It can happen when you import a character (either from GGG's public API or from exported build) that already has Energy Blade's pseudo-item equipped. Remove this item and equip any 1h weapon with a "Has 1 Abyssal Socket" mod. PoB prefers to compute this pseudo-item by itself.

3.24 (Necropolis) implementation
https://poe.ninja/builds/necropolis/character/Xeverous/wiser_and_beefier (~150-200 div budget)
- DPS: 25M (+40-50% shock on most Bosses: ~40M)
- ES: 13337 (leet) (ninja doesn't compute legion jewel correctly, PoB will)
- Armour: 53k
- No Forbidden Flesh/Flame - everything else well-optimized

3.23 (Affliction) implementation
https://pobb.in/Le2g9Cd8snm8 (50-100 div budget)

3.22 (TotA) implementation
https://pobb.in/L0cLwe1rtx7Y (~60 div budget)
- DPS: 30M Shaper
- ES: 9k
- Armour: 50k

With higher investment you can reach ~15k ES and ~100M DPS.
Someone else's characters (far more optimized and far more expensive):
- https://pobb.in/KGEDeFvQDN6b
- https://pobb.in/ugdi4vTlvNAq