Your opinion and all opinions are valid. What is your take on the defacto must play build for this league? (And why, of course)
Could be damage output, mechanic interactions, ease of play, fun - you name it.
CoC comet Oracle
You need a solid GPU, but rend and flame breath Smith of kitava. Cast fire spell on hit casts off of flame breath and it covers the screen in fireballs and explosions. It's glorious
Gonna throw out Frostbolt Demon Form Infernalist, been one of my favorite builds I've done in PoE 2 so far, couldn't recommend it higher.
Recoup as recovery is so so smooth, can throw up my PoB or Poe ninja if any are interested.
I personally play chaos monk for rhe damage with the ring that turns all your damage in chaos and instability because you're immune to it you can max it out plus with the purple flame it's a great deal for damage, not am s tier but I managed to make it into A tier I guess, you should try it
zero duration coc hexblast titan - it has the same playstyle as the popular EW coc comet but with some notable advantages and disadvantages
disadvantages:
not bm so base crit is low (this is literally so impactful that sometimes i think of how i can get this build to work on bm)
advantages:
not leech so you can spam away even if there are no mobs
palm of the dreamer is instant anti-lag tech
cheaper
literally immune to small hits/ailments even when standing still
less consistent, hexblast will sometimes, albeit rarely, refuse to cooperate and will not explode a few times in a row
ignore all map mods, i literally dont know what im slamming
CoC entangle oracle. Really highlights the strength of the oracle ascendancy, though ofc it ends up being generic "CoC comet" under the hood. Could also use bone storm in the CoC and lean into the physical spells.
Wolfpack Lich was fun. Actual wolves from the Pounce skill are much stronger than Wolfpack but both are fun and a different "minion" type build. I cleared all content with this one, no issue.
My favorite so far has been Spark CoC double Arc. Emperor Palpatine simulator.
Twister deadeye is a blast.
Reverse chill anything
Ease of play, disciple sorceress.
Staff + focus and 60% of ES as armor are the huge take aways from the ascendancy
Stack any caster build on top of it from there and you're face tanking t3 pinnacle hits pretty easy.
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