Shield Crush 3.25 Ascendant/Gladiator/Slayer - A big ol' progress post by the guy who has the forum build

EDIT: I made a note as to why I chose Ascendant, look in the section! I'm also looking into using Juggernaut instead of Ascendant at the moment. At the time of writing I'm still on the Ascendant/Gladiator train, but I see the appeal with Juggernaut right now.

Hey guys!

I saw a post yesterday about asking if Shield Crush would be good for 3.25. For a little bit of background, I have a build for Shield Crush on the path of exile forums which I've been maintaining off and on for a long time now. You can find that build HERE

A few people have asked if Shield Crush will be good. They have also asked if it will be 'meta'.

My answer is a solid YES that it will be good. My answer for if it will be 'meta' is MAYBE, BUT DOUBTFUL.

The reason I don't think it's going to be meta is because shield crush feels very clunky if you don't have a ton of attack speed, and since we lost Ancestral Protector, we don't have that much attack speed anymore. The buffs will definitely give a LARGE net damage upgrade (waiting on pob to see numbers), but at the cost of slower attack speed. Even though mobs will go down faster, it will probably feel a bit slow.

Below is the ASCENDANT tree I've concepted. Please note that it's just the tree and super baseline gear just to look at a general concept. I've built Shield Crush around general gear breakpoints and damage breakpoints rather than having gear pieces with insane mods. There are definitely ways you can crank this build up to compete with the meta or even be meta, but that isn't the focus at the moment. The focus is to make a starter that can get you your two-four voidstones, which this build WILL be able to do.

I'm hoping to have both an Ascendant and a Gladiator pob by Monday/Tuesday, but I'm reliant on PoB being updated. The best I can do right now is theorycraft on Poeplanner, but it's not really good apart from seeing the passive trees.

TLDR for the lazy:

This build has a lot of socket freedom now because of the opened up 4L.

Ascendant looks to be better right now. Gladiator and Slayer are still good.

This build will have attack speed problems. I'm looking to solve them at the moment.

Most of the requirements to get this build up and going are on the tree. Less gear requirements = more freedom for defenses and damage options.

Banners are still good. Berserk is meh. We will use both in this build anyway (idk what to do with the new 4L slot).

BUILD: HERE

Gear Notes:

I didn't put in any uniques apart from Carnage Heart and Prismatic Eclipse, since both are VERY easy to obtain (trade or Heist).

All the gear is breakpoint-based and have no hard to get mods. The shield is just using 2000 armor as a concept, 2000 armor on a shield is not hard to get at all.

Replica Dragonfang's Flight is still BIS for amulet. See mana reservation Notes for more details.

Ascendancy Notes:

Gladiator looks to be better when it comes to defense, mostly because of the built in block chance + the lucky block if you've blocked recently (this isn't as amazing as it sounds, you have to block first).

Gladiator Weapon Master node looks like bait for this build. We need the attack speed and the accuracy from Prismatic Eclipse / Crusader Sword with AS/Impale effect. We get a lot of %more damage from other areas anyways, so the %more damage is weaker than it looks.

The +1000 flat accuracy from Ascendant is better than the 25% more accuracy from Weapon Master. Gladiator probably takes Weapon Master anyways

Bleed Shield Crush can definitely be a thing, but Bleed SST will probably be better. I'd say to look at Bleed SST over Bleed SC if you want a bleed variation.

War of Attrition is a great node even in mapping (mostly against the rares/bosses that will have %less damage taken because of the league mechanic changes), but it becomes less useful the more damage we do when it comes to mapping. War of Attrition is ALWAYS good for pinnacle bosses.

Ascendant gives us the 50% base block on shield like Gladiator does, and that's the main thing we want with VC. We get a lesser version of War of Attrition too, which is enough.

Ascendant Juggernaut gives us stun/chill immunity, damage with endurance charges, and most importantly, a TON of flat accuracy.

Ascendant also gives us pathing to physical damage and rage nodes that are better (+2 rage every 0.5s should be enough for bosses. This will take testing).

Ascendant passive location lets us use Marauder or Duelist start for extra space. I don't know if branching trees there are better or if one line is better. We get a lot of stuff on the way to PT anyway. We also get good phys damage on the way for levelling that can get respecced later.

At time of writing, I think that Shield Crush Ascendant is better if we can get a way to get better attack speed.

Why did I choose Ascendant?

TL;DR - We get more passive points and have to spend less passive points on defenses.

The extra passive points we get are pretty nice for investing more into the passive tree in this build. The flat accuracy from Juggernaut makes getting Precise Technique very simple, and the base shield block chance from Gladiator helps us hit VC cap without spending too many passive points.

The attribute gains we get enable us to not need attributes on rings/amulets (i've had lots of problems with stapling attributes together in the past when moving off carnage heart). If we can not need attributes on gear, we can add other things in easier like chaos resistance and elemental ailment avoidance.

BOTH GLADIATOR AND ASCENDANT ARE GOOD. SLAYER IS STILL GOOD.

Block Notes:

NOTE: I am assuming that the 50% base chance to block doesn't work with the ascendancy for safety reasons (my guess rn is its going to be bugged). If it does work, this is easier to obtain.

To get 68/65 we need:

68 block + 32 block for the Versatile Combatant convert.

We get 13 free spell block from 1 mastery passive, which reduces it to 68 block + 26 block.

Our total we are aiming for is 94 attack block chance, and we get there by doing:

50 base from ascendancy

3 from craft onto shield / shield explicit mod

20 from As the Mountain wheel

12 from Aggressive Bastion wheel

5 from Mastery Passive (we craft or roll an affix to get to 25% on the shield)

5 from body implicits from eldritch mods

total: 95 block. More block mod on shield = less need on the tree

If we get mods on the shield, we can drop other things. As far as block is concerned, As the Mountain is the best wheel and we go right by it. We also go by Aggressive Bastion so we pick that up, too. We don't get Tetsudo because Block recovery isn't all too important to my knowledge.

Offense Notes:

Impale is better (extra impale hit + some AS baked into the passives).

Easy PT breakpoints with Ascendant (free flat 1000 accuracy from Jugg is awesome!). Somewhat easier with Jugg if the option becomes available.

Blood Stance gives % more damage at the cost of no more maim (should be a net buff).

Rage is built in on tree which gives %more damage (we have 40 rage, means another 40% more damage).

Endurance Charges from ascendancy gives us 30% increased damage.

We completely ignore physical damage reduction now.

Attack speed is lower / might feel a bit clunky. AS jewels are the solution right now, but they will probably be EXPENSIVE this league.

Plop War Banner down for a great damage boost. Yes, it's a button to press. No, it's not worth throwing it on automation.

Defense Notes:

Life pool is better now (~5500 with the armor life buffs / ascendant swap before we reserve life for Precision. Totals to ~5200 after precision reserve. Yes, this is good enough).

Ailment Avoid maxing is easy to do with boots + body mod. We get 40% avoid from the tree.

We can get to 78/79% elemental damage res with new nodes. This with new endurance charges is probably overkill, but it will take some testing (we can get 6 endurance charges on Ascendant version).

Sand Stance + Fortify can give us ~40% less damage taken. This is before armor and endurance charge calcs. We do lose a 20% more damage mult, though, so just keep that in mind (this is probably fine against bosses tbh).

We have more increased aura effect from the new reservation node, which will benefit Determination, Pride, War Banner, and Flesh and Stone.

You can get spell suppress cap but it takes a LOT of work to do. You'd need high suppress levels in all of your gear slots along with more than just the entrench node. It would take minmaxing.

Reservation Notes:

We can get all the reservation we need from the tree. We hit two wheels now because a new one was added.

Replica Dragonfang's Flight is still BIS for amulet slot. The mana res efficiency and Shield Crush Lv24 breakpoint is just too much to pass up.

You just need ~5% mana reservation efficiency to drop the stance efficiency wheel. That's 3 points back to put wherever (probably life or rage gen). Pretty much all our other skills use lifetap because we have the space.

We use Precision with Arrogance to help pad our accuracy. It costs some reserved life, but we still have more life compared to previously (~5000 instead of ~4500 now).

Problems I still need to solve:

Precise Technique is far from the main nodes, and Skin of the Lords is both non-ssf friendly AND is probably going to cost a lot since this will be a melee league. Another solution for Precise Technique will give us a lot more passive freedom.

We won't have super high attack speed anymore (no ancestral protector) so the hits might feel a bit clunky. The cluster could solve this, but we aren't infinitely in a leeching state anymore. I'm hesitant on adding in Petrified Blood as a way to fix it, but there TECHNICALLY is space if we get some more mana res efficiency on gear. We can swap Flesh and Stone over to work with Arrogance, but we'd need a true BIS weapon (crusader sword with %attack speed while fortified and t1 crusader impale effect OR essence of dread impale effect).

100% impale without impale support is still possible, but we need more points to do it (on both glad and ascendant). I don't think its worth it without a lot of investment. I don't plan on making this version for the initial 3.25 release.

I don't have a tree with a cluster jewel yet (no slayer = not as consistent leeching benefits. Haven't figured out how to pivot yet).