PoE Builds 3.20: Impending Doom Occultist Build

Dear exiles, today's build created by SideFX goes all in on curse explosions, using Impending Doom to detonate curses and trigger devastating chain reactions. Welcome to Build of the Week. Let's begin.

Pros

+ Clear maps in minutes

+ High Dps

+ EXTREME AoE

+ Overall Fun play style

+ Easy leveling with Orb of storms + spark until 38

+ New take on a build

Cons

- Can be expensive (Click here to replenish your PoE Currency)

- Requires some niche uniques to get it flowing smoothly

- Prob going to go up in price as other plays start to notice how OP

Overview

This build leveled with ease. Start with Orb of storms + spark until lv 38 and transit into the build. This build Applies and then "detonates" curses that you apply on enemies. With overlapping reapplications, it bypassed cast time and increased the proc rate.

Skill Tree

How Does This Work?

There are two key mechanics at the core of this build: detonating curses and spreading them. The primary skill here is Impending Doom. This support gem triggers the Doom Blast skill, dealing chaos area damage when a supported curse expires. The key thing to note is that the monster will still be under the effects of the supported curse when the explosion occurs.

SideFX uses Despair as the supported curse, reducing enemies' chaos resistance. The monster will still have reduced chaos resistance when the chaos explosion from Doom Blast goes off.

For faster blasting, SideFX uses Anomalous Impending Doom, which reduces the duration of the linked curse.

We're even wearing Dialla's Malefaction - by pumping up the skill gem quality, this reduces the curse duration even further by a total of around 100%.

You might also notice that Doom Blast is hitting tough enemies more than once. This is because we're using Spell Cascade, the support gem that creates overlapping copies of a spell. In this case, it supports Despair, creating the multiple purple circles you see. Fortunately, these copies are staggered enough that the Despair curse expires between each one, allowing multiple procs of Doom Blast on one enemy.

It works like this: Despair is cast and expires, Doom Blast goes off, Despair is reapplied by Spell Cascade, and so on.

Even better, SideFX is using Awakened Spell Cascade, which causes even more overlapping copies for even more blasts.

Offence

A good start, but what if we want more purple and even more explosions? Adding to this is the Profane Bloom Occultist Ascendancy passive, which detonates cursed enemies when they die. Now we can cause some proper chain reactions. The benefit of these blasts is that they bypass requirements for cast speed and cooldowns, meaning we have more space to invest in damage and defence.

To realize more chain reaction potential, we will need to curse more monsters. For this, SideFX is using Vixen's Entrapment unique gloves. These let us trigger a number of curses at once with a single cast of any other curse. In our case, our main curse, Despair, will do the trick.

Socketed into the gloves are three curses and the support gem Hex bloom, which spreads the supported curses when the monsters die.

Thanks to investment in the tree and our gear, we can apply up to four curses on one enemy. So by casting Despair, we also trigger all the curses on our gloves, spreading them to the corners of Wraeclast, weakening enemies and making them vulnerable to chain explosions.

Defence

Fortunately, our offence is a great defence. Curses provide the perfect tool for mitigation. On our gloves, we're using Enfeeble, which reduces monster damage and accuracy. Temporal Chains, which slows our enemies down, and Assassin's Mark, which grants life and mana on kill. Since these curses are being spread by Hex bloom, we have reliable coverage and uptime on them. We've also picked up masteries that let our curses Hinder and Blind enemies, rendering them slower and even less accurate.

This build is also exceptionally clean: we aren't leaving any bodies behind. This is because we're using Last Rites, the passive that ensures cursed enemies are destroyed when they die.

Profane Bloom also destroys the corpses of enemies it procs on. This mass disintegration protects us from any nasty monster death effects we might run into while powering through maps.

For personal defence, SideFX is speccing into life, evasion, and using Mind Over Matter to direct some of the damage we take to our mana. This combined with as many defensive auras as possible, gives us a reasonable chance against any weakened monsters that might get close.

Conlusion

SideFX has created a build that is simple to understand but powerful and unique. It excels at clearing maps, doing so safely in a storm of violet violence. I hope you like this build-sharing.