Face Breaker Build: Challenges and Potential in Path of Exile 3.25

The face breaker build relies on Abyssus for massive DPS, but struggles with unreliable defense and limited damage scaling.

### Facebreaker Crushing Fist Build Analysis
* ⚔️  The build is centered around using Facebreaker gloves with Abyssus, which **multiplies physical damage with unarmed melee attacks by 800%**.
* 🛡️  The defensive strategy relies on achieving **high block chance (around 90%)** through the Gladiator ascendancy and passive tree.
* 💉  Petrified Blood is used to **mitigate damage over time**, with Vitality and other skills providing **additional defenses**.
* 🔧  The build struggles with **animation issues** and **unreliable damage output** due to the **Crushing Fist skill's mechanics**.
* 💰  The gear setup includes **Abyssus**, **Facebreaker gloves**, **The Surrender shield**, and various rare items to **balance resistances**.
* 📊  The passive tree and ascendancy choices focus on **block chance, damage scaling, and some utility nodes**.
* 📹  The creator recommends against playing this build in its current state due to its **jankiness** and **lack of optimization**.
* 🔮  There is potential for improvement with more investment and adjustments, but it may not be a **top-tier build**.

welcome back you filthy Exiles. So, I've been putting together this um this face Breer build over the last couple days in between shield crush. I'm coming back to shield crush because this build is just something that I wanted to try. So, basically the idea behind this build was to run crushing Fist and um and basically set this up on a face breaker configuration with surrender. And we use abyssus, which is actually the Achilles heel of this build. And the way that face Breakers works is you have to use Ridge world's curse and um and a bunch of other different things to get it to work properly. And so use face breaker abyssus, and it's based on the adds 40 to 60 physical damage to attacks that gets multiplied by the 800% more physical damage with unarmed melee attacks. And then that then is modified by claw modifiers, which this basically applies claw modifiers to unarmed attack damage with mely skills. And yeah, so basically all of this culminates into a massive amount of DPS. Now where this build would

be really good right now positioned would not be running crushing fist. Because crushing fist is one of the jankiest skills, I think I have ever played in Path of Exile. There's like an animation problem where like you get caught on stuff, and I'll show you right now. In fact, let's just load up a map, and I'll show you exactly what I mean. So let's run just a Al can go underground river right, and I'm broke at the moment too, which means I can't really put a lot of currency into this. Now, the big pluses of this skill is absolutely enormous damage scaling, right? It's huge. The other big plus is obviously you have K hits cannot be evaded, so you don't need to stack any accuracy on this, which means Maps like this don't really have any issues. But the problem lies within the defense on the build. So max block is not the most reliable defense strategy, and I think I've got it down to where it sort of

works and the way that the defense works is we run versatile combatant right which is the tree uh Point down here and we get to like um 68 and 67% which if we have a look at the PO right that accumulates to around about uh 90 and 89% block rate right which is pretty high right that's not a small amount of block it's defensive the problem is when the block breaks and it happens totally unreliably like it's totally unstable so the way that I sort of got around that a little bit is to then run petrified blood and then the Petrified blood defers the damage over time with Vitality applied to that which is these setup setups in here and basically it regenerates now that fixes a lot of of the issues but not all of the issues the other big point is I'm having issues trying to scale damage but I'm only level 80 right I'm really pushing this I'm doing t16s at level 80 and 410 depth

and delve and I'll put all this video footage at the very end. Um CU I wanted to sort of show this build as it is, sort of with nothing pretty in it, just drop the audio there, right? So basically, this is a t16 underground river map and I'll give you a bit of an idea now. Elemental damage is problematic, but we'll fix that with Divine Shield. But the other big issue is you're totally reliant on... that's just my GPU having issues. You're totally reliant on getting hit. Now AOE wise is fantastic, right? And it looks really cool when it works. So here, right? See this problem here, I'm hitting the button and it's like a copper graphic, um, error with the skill. So basically, it's like if it's got like an elev on the map topology or something like that, it doesn't actually hit. And if that didn't happen, the skill would actually work, okay? So now we do the hit, it's big damage, right? Keep upgrading. I've sort of been playing around with this a lot and we

we're using the um, the ascendancy on the Gladiator that basically allows you to have a second double fist, if you want to call it that. So, like, it's got okay clear. It's relatively tanky considering I'm 10 points under what I should be right now, and it has absolutely disgusting levels of AOE. So, it looks really cool. Um, we sort of get around chaos rays where res reses are sort of fixed by running flast and whatnot. So, there's a bit of Jerry rigging in the build that needs to be teased out, but like for the most, it works. It's when it doesn't work that's when the problem's kick in, but we'll finish this map so you get a bit of an idea of what it looks like, and I'll show you on the boss. So, petrify blood really fixed a lot of my issues, which is really funny. So, the other thing is like clear speed, right? You're relying on basically like charging the enemy ground dots. Another big problem for the build.

so we'll just skip that for now. The other thing is there are some enemies that you just simply can't evade, and they are highly problematic for this build because we're almost solely relying on the block. All right, so here's the boss, which drops a portal down. So like, it's not horrible, and like we have a long way to go with damage, right? We're 10, we're like 15 points under the standard average, but the nullification of the skill when you get hit and it just sort of does nothing, that's problematic. There we go. So like, it's not the worst. It's a hard one because it's not the worst build that I've ever played, as you could see there, but it's also not the best build that I've ever played. But anyway, I'll give you a run-through of the breakdown of the gearing, everything right now. I can't recommend this build. I'll give you all the PS and everything it needs a bit of work. I don't need to refine it, but I

need to go back with my shield crush character and do a bit of delving and get some currency in the bank 'cause I'm really broke 'cause I don't usually play two characters in the first league but I really wanted to test it. If this was running like ground slam or Earth shatter of um groundbreaking or whatever it is, this would be really strong and it would be really good and consistent. Like defensively, your offense would be able to offset a lot of the problems with your defense so you wouldn't be sort of hampered too much. And there's a potential for this to get up into the 20 millions and I'll give you the projected po which is really Loosey Goosey right now. It needs a lot of work but but for the most face Breakers Works um you know spell suppression would definitely help this build a lot but again we come back to the point that we need the abyssus to be able to do any meaningful sort of damage. Without it, we're basically neutering this build but uh yeah anyway let's talk.

about the uh the gear setups and everything and um yeah okay so gearing on the build obviously abyssus this synergizes with face breaker with this 40 to 60 physical damage to attacks but the downside is 49% increased physical damage taken which is the biggest problem with this build. If your attack block breaks and an attack gets through you're going to feel it and you're going to get instantly clipped cuz their health pool is so small. Uh second to that we need ridgew world's curse I haven't done anything with this at this stage sorry. I'll just go into D andd mode um and then I also have the surrender. Now the big thing about the surrender is 386 life when you block and because we're basically 90% block are always blocking and so the idea behind the defensive layering is the Petrified blood decreases the damage and defers it enough so that the block can kick in and kick it back up. And I'll explain the duel setups too because they also assist.

with remediating health, which is why this build can sort of take a lot of hits before it crumbles. But um, then we have fourth Val, which I'm not convinced this is the best chest piece at this stage, but I've got a six-link on so why not. Uh, rings are just like any old rings to get resistances up, and that's another big problem with the build because we're socket poor, and we don't have. We're relying on key uniques that don't have resistances. Resistance balancing is really freaking hard. Um, and then obviously we use base Breakers. I got an 800% roll for really cheap. I'm not sure what these are worth 'cause my um, bloody uh, Path of Exile thing is not working at the moment. Now, on the Belt, I did get this belt, and I did craft it. Um, and it's an elder belt, and it did have melee hits, which St have 8% chance to fory, so I do get Fortify pretty easily. And then boots is any old all resist boots and

whatnot, but no life rolls and stuff like that. So it's not ideal. FL are basically just scratched together with the currency I've had left. And as I said, I got to get back in the SC build and get some currency. And that's basically it for the gearing. Okay, so for Gem setups: in the helm, I've got Vitality, arrogance, Clarity, and blood in the sand. That gets me to about 50% reserved or just close to, and you need that for petrified blood. Then I have petrified blood, War Banner, and purity of elements. Then in my chest, I have crushing fist, ex expert retaliation, which gives me the cooldown recovery. And then I've got impale, brutality, pulverize, and fist of War because this is a slam skill, so it synergizes. And then beyond that, I've got in my gloves Shield charge with faster attacks, assassin's Mark, and Mark on hit to get my crit up. And then I've got molten shell, automation, life tap, and more duration to keep my mol shell going.

that I'm not convinced that this is the best best use. Maybe some war cries would be good here, but that's it for the gem setups for the PO. Uh, basically we go down to Art of the Gladiator, we come back down, and this isn't necessarily the most efficient way to do this. We could probably, no, we can't even, yeah, we can, we can lose that point there. Um, we're still optimizing a lot, so I'm still sort of figuring it out. Um, and then we so we can ditch this and this as well, so we got three points spare. So basically we go down to Defiance, and then we need to come down and grab the prepared response nodes. This means retaliations um become useful for a longer period of time, so they don't dissipate. Then I've got the 20% armor for each different retaliation use. We're only going to have that 12% buff. Then we come down and grab the impale nodes where we can chuck in or we might actually go more, actually we might go

that there um, and then we need the uh, the proficiency, and the hard nox nodes, and we go up into solar steel. Then we come down and we grab the Bastion breaker nodes and temp % more physical damage, and the crit dismembering nodes, and critical Mastery here. Then down into brutal skewering, into versatile combatant, and into Golem's blood, and we pick up all the tudo and retaliation noes here with 2% increased damage per 75 armor in the shield, and up into this socket here. Now we use blood Notch, and we use mutable Force. We don't have stun immunity; the reason for that is that allows me to basically block more, so we have a ton of block recovery on this build like 684 block recovery. And the idea is the more block recovery, the more your block is going to go off so you can't get overcrowded by more offensive or more hits coming in. I'm not entirely sure that works perfectly, but so far it sort of works. Um, I'm able to do like 400 dep

delve, and the only problem I really have is against ground. Do now we come through here and we pick up all these retaliation nodes, get cool down recovery, and whatnot, and then 40% reduced cost of retaliation, which is 30 mana and 15 life, which is table for this build. Then we come up, we get bloodless up to as the mountain. This gives us Max attack block, and we also want Max spell block to max out our spell block up to us our 89% Lucky Block, uh, sort of status. Then we go inexorable, and then we go up to aggressive Bastion, taking more block nodes up to indiscriminate Revenge. This gives us like 60% increased AOE, which is really good for the slam skill, and then up to Juggernaut. Then we grab our immutable Force. I don't have a great role. These are like one to two div right now, but um, yeah, if you can get one that's close to a th000, that's the

best roll you can get that would probably help up to barbarism and we grab the dismembering disemboweling nodes with the crit master Mastery. 150% increased Critical Strike chance against enemies that are on full life and that means like this build's designed to be a onot build. It's not designed to be a two-shot build, so yeah that's going to help you in your endeavors and we could probably use this as well 'cause we have endurance charges off of the back of in Exon being in the build. So we're always generating endurance charges, so that's only going to give us more Elemental damage reduction and more life regeneration at the end of the day. Now as far as the ascendancy goes, we're going to go up to determin savior more than skill then we go into measured retaliation to get our double-shot retaliation and then into war of attrition which is a ramp up up to 100% uh if we're in the presence of the enemy.

which is pretty significant. If the fight drags out for a long time, the idea behind this build is to make a build that can basically sustain long-endured fights. Though I'm not entirely sure it's working at this stage the way that I expected it to work, but still, we just got to keep progressing the build to get there. Okay, so as far as the PO goes, right, I've got the configurations here. Basically, it's predicated on standing still. We have power charges from Assassins, MK endurance charges from our inexorable, and then basically we have fortified based on the Belt. 30 rage seems to generate from somewhere in the tree. I'm not entirely sure. Have we been hit recently? Yes. And we block recently more than often? Yes. Is the enemy on Full Life? Yes, because that's our crit bonus. It's a one-hit build and like 30 seconds in the enemy's presence, maybe like 15, gets us to about 2.0 and Guardian.

Pinnacle, no other changes in blood St gets us to about 2.1 mil DPS effective hit pool. Infinite, it's not infinite POV breaks when you basically try and do like block builds and stuff like that so if we actually tick it down, it's like 337,000 but in that one rare occasion you will die to a one hit right and it's just the way that Max block works and you need to basically mitigate that so my solution around that right now to a degree is to stack up a ton of armor and continue to progress petrified blood and the other thing would be fourth V and then run Divine flesh will deal with all the elemental so basically stack up chaos resistances and see how we go running that gaunlet. I'm not too sure how this will look in like pure endgame the DPS is a bit lackluster as well it's only like 2.1 million some might believe that's a lot I don't think it's enough we still need to do a lot with the boots

like we need brittle on the boots and things like that. Like we get 27,000 armor without determination. So we've done pretty well so far, but there's a lot of things I don't like about the build just yet. And I'm not happy to turn around and basically be like, Oh, this build's great, yada yada yada. I don't think it's great right now. I think it needs a lot of work. And actually, this is an old setup of the PO. So I'll put the new setup of the PO in the description below with all the changes with petrified blood and everything. But yeah, that's basically it for the build overall. I don't recommend playing this. It's really janky at this stage. Let me figure it out further, but it's we're a few weeks away from me probably doing that effectively. I'm going to cycle back to my shield crush build. And later today, you'll see an update for that. We're going to progress that to like crazy level endgame. But yeah, if you

like videos like this, trying out experimental builds and things like that. Like, it is fun. It's crazy fun to level. It was amazing, like, it was a crazy good build, and we can turn it into a slam build if we want to be really boring. But I want to keep it interesting. But yeah, if you like this type of video, don't forget to like and sub to the channel, and don't forget to go over and check out the twitch. But, uh, also, I'll put some footage at the end of this, uh, video room as well, and, um, you can see some of the gameplay of mapping and stuff like that. It's a fun build. It's just like a really interesting build if you're not taking the game too seriously. It's a bit of a meme build. It's probably not going to be a Titan killer. But that being said, with enough investment, anything can be a killer. So maybe eventually if I want to sink the divs into it. Anyway, I'll see you guys later and enjoy the footage one of my captains, the Beast is.

resistance. My spirit has come beyond. Be on. Got remember the P of s AR. Oh, oh. It not.

NOT SURE IF GOOD OR BAD! Facebreaker Crushing Fist Gladiator | PoE 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur

Jorgen

Building a Facebreaker Build in Path of Exile

This build focuses on using Crushing Fist and Facebreaker with Abyssus for massive DPS, but it is hindered by animation issues and unreliable defense due to max block strategy.

The build struggles with scaling damage and relies on getting hit, while also facing problems with AOE and graphical errors in certain map topologies.

Review of a Unique Gladiator Build in Path of Exile

The Gladiator build offers good clear speed and tankiness despite being underpowered, with strong AOE capabilities.

The build relies on some makeshift solutions and struggles with evasion and enemy blocking.

It shows potential for improvement in damage output and overall effectiveness, especially with the use of specific gear and skills.

Gearing and Gem Setups for a Defensive Build in Path of Exile

The Abyssus and Facebreaker combo provides high physical damage to attacks but also increases physical damage taken, posing a major risk to the player's small health pool.

The use of The Surrender shield, along with block and Petrified Blood, aims to mitigate and defer damage, allowing for the build to take multiple hits.

Gearing struggles with resistance balancing and socket limitations, while gem setups focus on reserving mana for Petrified Blood and incorporating various skills for attack, defense, and critical hits.

Efficient Skill Tree for Retaliation Build in PO

The skill tree focuses on maximizing retaliation use and armor for prolonged effectiveness.

It prioritizes block recovery and block chance for better defense.

The build also emphasizes increased area of effect and reduced cost of retaliation for efficient resource management.

Building a Sustainable Long-Duration Fight Build in POE

This build focuses on increasing Critical Strike chance against full life enemies and generating endurance charges for elemental damage reduction and life regeneration.

The skill tree is designed to sustain prolonged fights, although its effectiveness is still uncertain.

The build relies on standing still to gain power charges, endurance charges, and fortify, with a strategy to mitigate one-hit KOs using armor and chaos resistances.

The DPS is currently considered lackluster and requires further improvement for endgame content.

Critique of a POE Build and Plans for the Future

The current POE build is not performing well and needs a lot of improvement, with plans to update the setup and focus on a shield crush build instead.

The creator acknowledges the build as experimental and fun for casual gameplay, not suitable for serious gaming.

The video encourages viewers to like, subscribe, and check out their Twitch channel for more content.