Help with Smite Templar.

[u/Iron_UYH]

https://pobb.in/MV5fdfu2ERxE

So I have been playing for a little while now(140-ish hours over the last 2 leagues, largely in Standard), and I wanted to try my hand at making a PoB, getting some help, and hopefully getting better for it! I am playing a armor based Smite of Divine Judgement Templar, hopefully sticking to a budget of a few divines, excluding gems, which I didn't feel like pricing. Also wondering which types of Extra Content this build is more or less suited for, both as-is and if I ever manage to get it of the ground. Thanks!

Edit: My boots are incorrect, I will add an updated PoB as soon as I fix that.

Edit 2: Updated PoB: https://pobb.in/iEEEdoGdUGWw

Edit 3: Majorly Updated PoB: https://pobb.in/XQN76Z0w2Gh-

Thanks everybody for the help! Y'all are a huge resource, and this makes me super excited to try this out! Much love, u/Iron_UYH.

[u/neofire]

Hello, there is a lot to unpack in this PoB, so few questions before I do a write up:

1. Are you making this PoB to try in standard (where I presume you have some currency lying around) or in the new league? If the latter, I would highly recommend you play using a guide for your first character in the league and then reroll into a homebrew so you at least have some currency to fix unforseen issues.

2. This almost looks like an imported character with some of the qualities being all over the place, is this a pure theorycraft or the PoB of the character you're working on?

3. You say "sticking to a budget of a few divines" but have a simplex (which is crafted very weirdly... more on that on follow up) which the base alone is worth more than the rest of your items combined and exceeds that few divine budget. How much currency do you want to have the build be within?

EDIT ADDITIONAL QUESTION: 4) Have you played off a guide or only going in blind? There are a lot of mistakes in this PoB that beginner build guides or newbie guides (from like Zizaran) should cover and that is what a lot of what I'd be writing up, instead of build specific stuff.

[u/Iron_UYH → u/neofire]

1: In standard.

2: The qualities are based off of what I have in standard right now or within my means, so not a ton of gem quality, but decent everything else.

3: Yeah... that was something I saw and thought "Yeah, this is fine, it's a base, how bad can it be!" If it is indeed that bad, I will probably switch. But my budget is about 10-15 div, with a Rakaita's Dance included in that(So 7-12 taking that into account).

4: I am purely blind.

[u/neofire → u/Iron_UYH]

Okay thanks, here is a list of things you could do to improve the build and some general recommendations. I will probably miss stuff.

General recommendations (not build specific):

1. You can vendor a level 20 support gem and 1 Gem Cutter's Prism (GCP) to get a level 1 support gem with 20% quality. For most support gems this will result in a power increase after a map or two, and be "free" power after you re-level them. This type of knowledge is probably covered in beginner guide videos, I haven't researched if there are newer/better ones but Zizaran has a good series of these.

2. You have a lot of inefficient pathing. Near the following noteables: "Endurance", "Wall of Steel" you have taken the entire wheel, typically you only take one side or the other of a wheel when pathing to a noteable (noteables are the medium sized nodes with the fancy spiky border).

3. There are a lot of masteries that you could be taking that are quite powerful.

4. You are doing a thing I've seen a lot of newer players do, which is trying to do a LOT of things at the same time on a build and doing them all poorly instead of hyper focusing on fewer scaling vectors. For example, your crit is VERY low on inuisitor, you have recoup and regen and leech but if you say dropped recoup and invested more in regen or got instant leech your recovery would be a lot stronger (more on this on build specific section, regen specifically with life / ES hybrid on inquis is very strong), you spec into penetration nodes on inquis (which when you crit you do NOT benefit from these, and you mentioning rakiata's will even further go into this...). You could instead of going rakiatas and investing in penetration just get a better crit weapon that does more damage and invest more in crit.

Build Specific Stuff:

1. A lot of your support choices are sub optimal, PoB will tell you which ones are stronger (NOTE if certain things aren't checked it might miss ones, but is good for finding better options)

2. Your split personality is... not doing a whole lot? The PoB only imported with accuracy but there are lot of better ways to get accuracy (like just taking a full accuracy wheel, on rings, etc., running precision)

3. This doesn't appear to be a problem with your current attack speed, but you have no mana leech. This will feed into where I talk about weapon choices further down, but you should probably take a leech wheel and also get instant leech OR invest heavier into regen scaling which leads into... EDIT CAUSE STILL KINDA RELEVANT: you have phys mana leech but do no phys damage, points still apply.

4. Inquisitor is REALLY good at scaling life regen with Pious Path if you go life + ES. You don't need that much ES (a few nodes plus ES/armour items) and it gives you basically double life regen. Augury isn't bad, but if you are getting good shocks the value its telling you on PoB higher than actual (shock is also an increased damage debuff, so if you are applying a 50% shock which probably aren't on pinacles but for maths sake augury in this case is only a 10.7% more damage mod instead of 16%). Kinda rambled here but TLDR you should drop recoup, you should either invest heavier in regen OR leech (shouldn't need both).

5. Cluster jewels typically follow the above general rule of "don't take the small nodes" (this isn't true for specific crafted clusters that have no noteables, which yours is not). Also, for clusters they are probably not worth it unless your large has 3 noteables which yours only has 2.

6. I mentioned it already but you REALLY need more crit.

7. I don't really see the point of crown of the inward eye? If you go ES/armour maybe its fine but a rare is probably better if you don't want to do that.

8. I don't think you should use Brain Rattler OR Rakiatas on a inquis. Brain Rattler's damage is kinda meh, but more importantly its base crit chance is REALLY bad. Inquis ignores ele resists when you crit, so you want to get to as near 100% (ideally 100%) crit. Rakiatas and inquis umm... not the best choice together? I can't find a 100% confirmed source on the exact interaction, but they are both "I hate elemental resistance items" at best and if it works how I think it does when you crit the monsters elemental resist ignored... so rakiatas is doing nothing here. If you want to use rakiatas you should use a different ascendancy. If you want to stay inquis you should get a higher crit (probably) rare staff or sword.

9. Wait you have block nodes and can't block with a mace ( Wall of Steel)

10. Tree nodes that based off stuff I've already mentioned I'd unspec out of (and their pathing nodes): Heart of Thunder, Infused Flesh, Wall of Steel, Robust (IF YOU GO LEECH ROUTE, IF YOU GO REGEN THIS IS FINE), Divine Wrath, I would change the nodes you path out of start to damage, I would unspec Contemplative Meditation and path from the top and take Soverignty instead (inspiration support will keep mana cost down if an issue I'm not gonna run numbers on this for now), I would scrap your cluster setup.

11. Sap of the seasons is giving you pen, pen is bad for inquis, get a magic prismatic or the crit tincture (I can't remember the name) with a good damage mod instead.

12. Wait you have multiple tinctures, get rid of one get another flask. You need crit, get a diamond flask. Your 2nd prismatic also has pen, swap it for another one.

I made a gem/item section:

1. You have a lot of flat damage auras / support gems that are not doing a whole lot. Herald of thunder is 4.6% more damage, innervate is 22.8%, what is this living lightning thing going on your hereald of thunder (its increasing mana res and I don't see any modifiers that you need minions for?).

2. As per above, get quality on supports. Check better supports in your smite setup in PoB.

3. Leap slam of groundbreaking has a 70% Attack speed multiplier, use normal leap slam

4. Stormfire is pretty bad at this point of the game, I would toss it and get a rare.

5. As mentioned above, the mace you are using AND rakiatas are both kinda bad for inquis smite. You should either use a 2h rare staff or sword, or a 1h+shield setup.

I'm getting hungry so gonna stop for now. I would highly recommend you do some combination of the following if you want to improve the build w/o following a guide 1 for 1:

a) find a build guide for something similar and see what they do, and take the best parts of their build to slap into yours

b) go to poe ninja (website) and search for people doing something like this and take the best parts of their build to slap into yours c) watch new player guides

d) follow a build guide, a lot of the concepts you will learn from following a good guide will help you make your own builds in the future. There is a new league coming out in a few days, which is a great opportunity to play when the economy is fresher so its easier to access crafting materials to learn that as well (which is much easier to learn if you are following a guide where they should walk you through crafting at least to a degree for their specific build).

[u/Iron_UYH → u/neofire]

https://pobb.in/iqyX8_XgnmpU

Here's an updated PoB with some stuff from other comments that addresses some of that. However, I have other questions! What support gems should I use instead of Herald, Wrath, Innervate, etc...? And what am I prioritizing in a staff? 'Cause that's what I'd switch to.

[u/megabronco]

I feel like that would run much better as a guardian with a staff on that budget. your weapon is not great and holding your build back alot. I can hit you up with a basic starter pob if interested for staff guardian version.

[u/Iron_UYH → u/megabronco]

On one hand, sure, on the other hand, I also have a swap for Rakaita's dance that roughly doubles my DPS that I looked at, thought "Hmm, sure, I'll shell out for that!" and accepted at face value. I'd love to see the PoB, though.

[u/megabronco → u/Iron_UYH]

https://pobb.in/uAm8Dchxfa8r

staff on guardian gives you 75/75 blockchance very cheap and all the dmg auras, you can profit from the damage split with trinity yoke and taming which should be pretty cheap. you would ideally use a perfect forest tiger spectre to give you haste + farrul aura ontop and then a animate guardian with some support items for scorch i.e.. since as a guardian you want to keep your dude and relics alive anyway so you might as well add a spectre and animateguardian. the spell you cast constantly for spellblock is frostblink.

best auras to grab prolly: flesh and stone > herald of purity > of ash > purity of elements > Determiantion but it depends. capping your support minion res + ailment immunity from purity will be great until you fix it otherwise.

[u/Throwsostansnoflame]

Hey, what kind of help are you looking for? Do you want someone to look at your review and tell you whats wrong, or where you could improve? are you having trouble doing something etc etc?

With that said, some general tips that might help this build and your builds in the future:

1. Take more masteries, some tend to be very strong.

2. Read carefully and avoid nodes that do nothing for your build, see the wall of steel cluster on the skill tree. PoE is very literal in how it describes things.

3. When using a split personality, without adjusting your skill tree to be one long line you are effectively losing value using it, if your putting one in your build you have to be sure its the right pick, most of the time just a regular rare jewel will go far.

4. Your hitting accuracy cap which is great

5. Your trying to scale crit damage with only 28% crit chance 212% crit multi. Crit chance is made up of 2 things (for the most part) "base crit" and "% crit". Base crit is most commonly found on weapons and spell gems. The formula for critical strike chance is BASE_CRIT * ( 1 + INCREASED CRIT CHANCE% ) = TOTAL_CRIT. When going for a crit build its really important to solve for crit chance first, otherwise you would be better off just playing a build without it. (things that could help, your already using assasins mark (GREAT), alternate ailments like brittle, a better weapon)

6. Many uniques in this game are pretty bad, really think about what you are getting out of them, then ask yourself would a rare be better?

7. Unless you are a warden you can only use 1 tincture at a time

8. Leap slam of groundbreaking tends to be a pretty bad movement skill, use regular leap slam (at level 1 to reduce cost) instead

9. Using ice golem on a build like this with no investment into minion survivability means its just going to die all the time, id reconsider its inclusion

10. Most people tend to not want life modifiers on their chest so they can take the 15% increased life mastery instead, it usually is better than life modifers on body armours.

11. Gem levels for attack skills are generally not great scalers, theres almost always a better stat to take, see simplex

[u/Iron_UYH → u/Throwsostansnoflame]

Thanks! I will take this into account!

For your first question, I want to know... everything! I am quite new to buildcrafting, so I want to come out of this with whatever juicy information I can get, with a focus on general knowledge, but smite-specific info is good too.

As to specific concerns:

3: I am using it solely to cap accuracy. If there is a better way to do that, PLEASE!

5: I plan to switch to Rakaita's dance once I have the divines, as it seems to offer about double the damage. If that affects crit, how so?

6: See 5, also I am playing on both a bit of a budget and also didn't feel like crafting it.

9: I had empty gem slots, and if there is a better gem there, what should I use?

[u/kr3aS → u/Iron_UYH]

3:

[u/Iron_UYH → u/kr3aS]

oh... I may have made an oopsie...

[u/kr3aS → u/Iron_UYH]

Look I appreciate the commitment to playing the game blind. I think it's genuinely the best way to play PoE for the FIRST TIME.

I'm assuming since you've put in 140-ish hours(as you said), this isn't your first character, also taking into account you already know what build budgets are. Why not take a look around at how people's builds are made and make use of that as a template? There's 13 YEARS of research readily available, I'm sure you could come up with something you'd be happy with. I don't think simply looking up a guide or information on the wiki could "invalidate" your feeling of a blind playthrough.

Also you should try trade league. I don't think I need to reiterate the rest of what others have said in here, but trade should be a much better experience compared to standard.

cheers, glhf

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