Thead=Title, basically, I really want to be a big lizard, but the plethora of build choices has me confused.
Definitely prefer am ES build as I already have tons of great ES gear, but a strong suggestion otherwise will get my attention.
Check phylaris' build on youtube! It's a ci build using rend + hoi for clear and flame breath for bossing. It was very budget friendly when I made the build about a month ago, so I think 1000 divs is very reasonable this late into the league.
Was looking forward to playing a dragon too, but then i saw "cannot gain rage while channeling" and decided to forget it.
I had a lot of fun with a whirling assault / flame breath Infernalist. Stacked crit/crit damage and took the low life crit bonuses. Balancing resistance was a bit of a hassle but the combo of clear and single target is nice. Poe ninja
Shameless plug for this off meta jank build - technically you’re only a wyvern during bossing but you might enjoy it if you’ve ever played fighting games (Liu Kang power fantasy) - with your budget you should be able to get some cracked gears and push this even further. Also the defense tech on this is actually really neat
https://youtu.be/S6NZrKqf11o?si=nxDEhOZvAO4tclsR
My oil barrage wyvern (can be switched to flame breath) is crushing the game.
Using blink and pounce to move and create power charges, then using salvo +fork+ chain in oil barrage to make it fire multi direction.
Im using CI and with moderate gear, i can get 12k ES, with 1.6s recharge time so Im very tanky.
Highly recommended, cost around 1k div (since the weapon alone cost ard 500d)
Check out prada on youtube his builds are sick.
There is an "Infinite" flame breath wyvern build on mobalytics that I followed but had a very limited 5 div budget and I clear pretty decent. I can only imagine what 1000 divs could get you. You use the bear cry to build rage for flame breath and Gemling Legionairre for constant power charges to keep it going longer. I basically am flame breathing constantly. You scream > breath > land > scream > breath. Super fun.
I've heard about some crazy interactions between Smith of Kitava and Wyvern. You can use "Cast fire spell on hit" in combination with the Flame Breath to constantly trigger living bomb and fireball to absolutely annihilate everything.
I got bored at this stage in the league and decided to spend many of my hard earned divines on a small project. Wouldn't it be funny to stack Energy shield for a min-level char? [https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a027](https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a027) Tabula rasa has relevant jewel mods noted on it in POB so the math actually works out since it doesn't seem to work properly in POB. second screenshot is with a lvl 29 discipline aura with 36% increased aura magnitude - I didn't wanna spend another several thousand divines on a support character, I just wanted to see how well it would work theoretically >3000 ES without aurabot is possible, however, its basically impossible in practice. As of now, there are \*18\* 2 socket uncorrupted crown of thorns left on trade - on average it takes \~11 to hit a 30% and then another 1 in 3 to get a 3 socket one. Hitting a double corrupt on said 3 socket would be better then my current one, but that's not plausible sadly. Same for the boots. Hitting a better double corrupt on the gloves and focus would likely be plausible, but I couldn't buy more bases from Finn. Grip of Kulemak 59% ES \*should\* be possible, but it already took me over 40 attempts to hit 57% so I think I'll just leave it as is. Belt I didn't find any other way besides the 25% corrupt to get ES without a level requirement - if anyone has any idea tell me. Amulet could sanctify for 19/19 but again, would require silly amounts of currency (each try is \~30 div as is with annoint + sanctify + quality). I \*think\* patient barrier should be best annoint, but correct me if I'm wrong. Total investment into this character so far is about 3000 divines, probably a bit more. further thoughts \- maximum technically possible is 3112 ES at level 2 unless I'm missing something important. POB [https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a02a](https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a02a) \- doubting this but: is it possible to get an ascendency at this low level by skipping straight to geonor with a helper? In which case it might be possible that xp penalties kicking it would allow me to ascend at lvl 2? This would allow +20% +20% (ascendency) +60% (jewel) ES, which would get me to 3218 ES (actual build) / 3732 ES (max technically possible) Did I miss anything?
I made an elemental crossbow varashta sorc this season as my starting build (goal was to exploit yoke of suffering's full potential, you can find poe ninja below, don't be fooled by the dmg tooltip, it kill ubers before they can move) and so since I was in the intel side of the tree I used my weapon swap to maximize exposure (with whispering ice) and curse magnitude. Here with some non-optimized gear I'm reaching a total of -338% res (that's -169% on bosses), meaning it's better than rakiata's. I use cursed ground support to apply the curse and icestorm (which comes with the staff) with prolonged duration and potent exposure to make the exposure last longer. This tech doesn't require much investment apart from your weapon swap and a few sockets at most so it can be plugged into many elemental builds. As it is now, it requires you to cast the spells with your weapon swap, so I use it mostly for bosses, but i might cast icestorm on bulky rares in juiced maps once in a while. If you have a skill dedicated for mapping, it'll propably better to use rakiata on it, and remove it or use another skill for bosses. Here's the poeninja: [https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/McZaatar-0907/character/Dendjala](https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/McZaatar-0907/character/Dendjala) I might make a build showcase if people are interested, it's a fun league starter build. With yoke and the electrocution node on the tree, enemies have 120% damage taken, more if they're cursed, on top of the giant res drop, plus you benefit from a lot of the "damage against enemies with ailments nodes" so that's why the tooltip is low (explosive grenades indicate 60k in game but they hit bosses for like 2M) at first I was playing with permafrost bolt with frost nexus + navira's fracture + fragmentation rounds, it was a fun combo and really strong for leveling but I couldn't scale navira's fracture damage in late game (I had command + minion nodes on my second weapon instead of the curse/exposure at the time) Hope this inspires some of you!
The Oracle Death Star is fully operational- only took 30 days of playtime. GGGs https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/L0L-breh-1628/character/ShapesofWrath