EK Ignite: Tanky Version Struggles with Survivability, Path of Exile 3.25

The EK ignite build faced significant nerfs, leading to a shift towards a tankier version with damage mitigation and leech focus.

### EK Ignite Tanky Build Experiment and Conclusion
* 🔥  The speaker discusses their attempt to create a **tankier version** of the EK ignite build in Path of Exile, following recent nerfs to the skill and related mechanics in **patch 3.25**.
* 🛡️  Two potential approaches were considered: one involving the **Dawnbreaker shield for damage conversion**, and the other using the **Mah's Subtle Machination shield for the Divine Flesh keystone**.
* 💼  The Dawnbreaker approach was abandoned due to the high resistance requirements imposed by the Temper by War keystone, making **gear optimization difficult**.
* 🧩  The Mah's Subtle Machination shield approach was pursued, but required heavy investment in **leech mechanics** to sustain energy shield (ES) due to the shield's **unique properties**.
* 💥  Despite efforts to make the build tankier, the speaker ultimately concludes that the traditional "**glass cannon**" EK ignite build is **more effective** for their gameplay needs.
* 🗺️  A map showcase is provided to demonstrate the build's performance in challenging content, highlighting the struggles faced in **sustaining survivability**.
* 🔮  The speaker hints at future build experiments, mentioning a potential shift to a **burning arrow build for comparison**.
* 🎮  The video concludes with a **thank you to viewers** and a **preview of upcoming content**.

hey guys, and welcome to a new video. Today, I want to go over my alternate way of building EK ignite. As we know, EK ignite got a big hit from the 3.25 patch note. Determination nerfed, Grace nerfed, and for the base values of the gems. So, since we're not stacking armor through gear with the better bases, better basically, we're just getting a minus in the defensive aspect. The physical damage taken got nerfed, the divine blessing for the free AA got completely removed. On top of that, the hatred, like the hatred aura, also got the more cold damage removed. So, we know already that this was like a nerf to EK overall. And honestly, I tried to make a more tanky version to offset the missing damage. The missing damage is not that bad. You can still get ignite cap or like 30 million ignite, but you're pretty much a glass cannon. So, what I tried to do is making a tanky version out of it that basically can

stay in the fight for a bit longer for the missing damage so I did try two different ways um one is going to be the dawn breaker um version. The other one is the Mook subtle machination version right. So first of all just to you understand what I tried to achieve so damage shifting is basically one of the best ways to mitigate damage. So for example with the um tempered by by War Keystone over here coming from the Rakata on a lethal Pride you get this Keystone Temper by War. And it says 50% of cold lightning damage taken as fire damage but therefore 50% less than cold uh resistance overall from gear right. So 100% cold rest on your gloves for example would only be worth 50 because it's reduced by 50%. But what is the the thing why would you even like um consider converting your uh resistance in that case right uh that's D and D clear um the basically you're getting immune to cold penetration lightning penetration if you get to 100% because

you don't get these damage types anymore. Right on top of that, you can stack up to like 90% fire resistance. So you're technically having triple 90 ALR with this kind of version. Right. The problem is there is only two ways to convert 100% into like from lightning and cold into fire. And this is the 10i by War plus the sueme vision for purity of fire. And which says 30%. And then with the Dome breaker gives you also 20% lightning cold as fir. So you have 20% from The Shield, 30 from the suem vision, and 50 from tempered by War gives you 100%. So you can completely ignore all kind of lightning and cold resistance because it's not damage taking from hits. It's overall damage. So even cold dot will be taking as fire damage. So you can completely go minus 100 cold resistance and you will still not die to cold damage because you take fire damage instead. Right. And with

90% fires you're basically having 90% Cal res as well and the Sue Vision version doesn't work over here. I mean it would work but why would you do that? We get so much damage from our AAS coming from melal lens coming from hatred coming from all the like Heralds and stuff. I think you can still run Heralds CU. They're not AAS but you're losing out on discipline. You're losing out of uh all these kind of things right and this would be such a damage loss and we would not even be able to convert um the the physical into cold. I mean you can find ways to do that but with hatred is just the easier way with the um Watchers modify right so that basically the sublim vision version Falls for me personally off. So I got here 50% then 20% from The Shield is 70% and the new Watchers Z modifier for Pur of fire which is also 15 15% cold lightning damage taking as fire up to 20%.

get to 90%. So my first take was getting 90% conversion into fire. Get 90% fire resistance, but still try to um R cap your cold and lightning because you're still taking 10% of the damage, right? But the problem is with Temper by War, you need a [ __ ] ton of cold lightning resistance. As an example, my gloves have um like T1 T2 cold and lightning rest. My helmet had t double T1 cold lightning rest. My belt has double T1 cold lightning rest, and I was still not cold lightning rest kept because you now you need twice as much resistance based on a 10 by by War. So I said this is not really the way to go just because you know I need my suffixes for other things like faster ignite dot multi and all these kind of things, but I cannot allow myself to do that because if I run like only like 40 lightning resistance, even if I only take 10%, you're still going to be like what is the point of even

Shifting the damage then right, so another way of getting to 100% next to discipline vision is the mahles mination um thingy. There's a lot of keystones on there, there's a lot of modifiers, and I spent like two or three hours today, I'm getting somewhat a workable uh version of this, which I achieved, but it still feels like paper. The thing here is it get it gives you divine flesh, which is naturally uh on the ESS Shel. I think like the Glorious vanity by Kaka or anything like that gives you the Keystone um Divine flesh, and you cannot get that with tempered by War because obviously we don't have a um glorious vanity, we have a little pride, but the shield gives you um Divine flesh. So now we have 50% of cold lightning taking as fire, but the Divine flesh gives you 50% of Alie damage taking as chaos. So here is 50%, and here is 50%, so now I can completely ignore that, and that's why I

swapped away this like couple items. I just used those because I didn't want to buy anything else, but then I got like, for example, a penitent mask for four maximum chaos resistance. Just with chaos rest, I get a [__] ton of fire R based on my purity of fire. Um, because I want to also get to like 90 Max rest, right? And if I use my Ruby flask, I'm already at 89%, and way over fire is kept. So what is the problem here you have to solve a lot of issues with this shield and, um, basically the main problem with this Shield is the reworked Valack. So if you take a look at the new Val pack, it basically says life Leech from melee damage is instant and also cannot recover life other than from Leech. And I tried like almost everything, um, for example, with the replica s of div vine where where I get um life recovery from flasks also applies to energy Shield. So because if you have the shield, you just have zero energy Shield. So you need to

start restoring something right. So if I unequip that, you see that my ES would go up again, right? But with that, you start at zero energy and you cannot regen, and you cannot recover ES. And based on the VALP, you cannot get anything from life flasks either. So what would work is, for example, if I put in a Breathing Jar and would start basically, uh, why don't I don't get sticks, uh, doesn't matter, but you could spawn the worms, kill those off, and get some ES going to cast your spells based on, um, M like the Eldrid Battery, right? I tried it with a Forbidden Taste, which says recover 95% life on use, but this is not a life flask, it's a Quartz Flask, so this works without the shield. So as soon as I put away the shield, uh, and I put this on, um, I basically, with the Sor of Div Vine over here, as soon as I press my Forbidden Taste, I'm instantly restoring all of my ES, right? But with a shield on.

with Valak blocking everything, the only thing that I found out that works is life gain or ES gain on hit, right? But this is more like formal skills because as a caster, you don't have like 100 hits per second and Lee and that told me instantly that I have to focus entirely on Lee. So I got this leech cluster over here for the light E spell damage leech as ES with a Mastery of some instant leech. Another complete lifely like ES leech Mastery over here to just get somewhat of um ES Lee going, right? Another thing on this shield is the Everlasting Sacrifice. This is something I don't build around, um, but once you get to full energy, you deplete all of your energy shield and therefore you get a buff which gives you five to all Maximum resistance, including chaos resistance. So that was like this is pretty nice. Usually you play the M subtle shield on Pathfinders with the enduring life flask and stuff like that, but I think this will now even be gutted as well based on

a new vpe note cannot recover life other than from Leech. I also tried out the um brush with death um medium cluster note. If I find it somewhere, do I have it in my tree? Uh, nope, it's somewhere, but the brush with death says 1% of es and life recovered on kill. That also don't work, so strictly nothing works with this, but the um, the leech, basically, right? So what I did is just a building completely around leech, but also getting so much monor reservation efficiency going that I can cast at least one um spell, basically, um, like one EK. So I have like here 99 Mana, my EK cost 86 with a Mastery to um skills cost life instead of 50% Mana cost. So now I can use one EK without eldri battery to get the um, the Lee basically going. As you see here, now I'm recovering, yes, now the AL battery, so I can spam that [ __ ] so as long as I have my leech instance go going, my my es

goes up right, but the shield also says you lose 5% of ES per second. This is why you see that degen right. So you need at least somewhat of a Mana pull to cast one EK to get your leech going, and then you basically can just, uh, yeah, simply self-sustain that. And you're going to see in a second once I get full, I'm losing all my ES. I get the Everlasting sacrifice, and then I have enough Mana left to basically get this entire loop going again, right? So this is the most effective way, uh, that I found out that this could be playable, right? And then I did, uh, even more stuff like I tried out a lot of things. I, I think I wasted like 15 or 20 divines just by clust jewels and and supplemental gear and and just to try everything like that going. But at the end of the day, it's don't get me wrong, EK is still insane for any kind of like insane map Blaster, right? But what I'm currently

doing is farming a deli strands um with um basically uh here on my atlas tree here with scite so I'm running the deli mirror and the thing how the deli Mirror Works is the further you get away from the deli mirror the harder monster get right strength is a very long layout. I get like 200 simulacrum splinters for one map, which is insane, but at the end of the map right before you hit the the um the mapos, the monsters are 100% Del right so they are very very tanky and also deal a [ __ ] ton of damage, and I just die nonstop right. Sometimes I even cannot finish the map. I need to stop the Del because the monster just stun locking me, kill me, and so on and so forth. So I'm wondering is this entar trying to make the build tanky even worth, and my opinion is no. It is not. I would rather now since I tested all of this, would just play it in the old version, get a bow, get a quiver, get

insane amounts of damage. Get ignite capped and just live. Um, the way that you're a glass Cannon until you get a hat hunter or a mage blood to um be able to get a granite flk back. Maybe and some base armor um in that case, right. But I'm still going to make give you guys a map showcase so you guys see, uh, what that would look like in the current state. So what I'm currently doing is um, we go to scarabs, we do the sulfite Scarab, we get a shrine, we get the mirror of delirium, we do get the breaches. Let's let um, take two breaches because my current Atlas passive tree is around breaches is about map sustain is with the singular Focus as I said with the um, the EO worlds with breach with shrines and with basically right. And I wanted to make this as cheap as possible so all of these scarabs are like one Kos a piece, right. Nik Scarab super cheap. The Mira Deli one Kos. I think the shrine is a little bit more.

expensive. No, it's also one Chaos, so this like five Chaos invested into scarabs, basically, right? So let me pick one of my beautiful maps, and we're going to get a map showcase going, so you see how this build plays in action. I do have quite a lot of ES now, um, and I actually don't need that much because with the new, um, like with the March of the Legion, you still get a five-link and you get an Inspiration, so it is a lot cheaper, but you don't want to have as much, um, Energy Shield just because of you want to proc the Everlasting Sacrifice as consistent as possible, but, um, [ __ ] I just lost track, um, sacrifice, yeah. Mind of a matter. I unspe this because it's so bad if you only have 99 Mana for one EK, and you get hit by anything, and you just run in circles, and you just cannot get any stuff going. You guys know how it feels like with Mind of a matter if you get an ignite on.

you just deplete your enti s. You just cannot even cast a spell, and you just run around try not to get hit, and it feels super clunky. And with the Everlasting sacrifice um proc thing, it's even worse. So let's see how that map goes. I'm just let a couple monsters spawn, uh, and hit my first EK. I get my um es recovery, and now basically the mapping uh starts. If I have enough man on, now I'm pressing my uh Melo Valance to trigger a 20 seconds Melo balance buff, right? And now my Everlasting sacrifice procs, and I get my es back, basically cuz we have over Leach. But as you already saw, I just cannot tank any hits, and this is like problematic because it supposed to be a tanky version. I mean I'm obviously not having like insane gear, by no means 89 fires, 84 Kos, so it is not bad double 90% with born of chaos Mega L Maniacs or something like that or small class Jews.

is definitely um your late-game option, but I just don't see it happening. I just cannot um say this is worth to do because you're losing out a lot of damage. On top of that, right, and obviously when doing these strengths I'm running all the Ulta modifier so the maps get very very hard. I say again for normal mapping t16 you just need a five divines gear and you're going to have the Time of Your Life coming with all the the proliferations and stuff. It is really dead fun, right, but for the harder content that I'm trying to do here, it's just not working out. Like the character is just too squishy even with insta Leach and over Leach, but you don't have any form of utter recovery based on your life cuz life lks don't work. And as you see, I don't have um evasion. I don't have spell suppression because with a new uh like with a March of um the legion you you just lose another spot for a

potential um skull suppression and therefore you know how you're going to get all your spell suppression going. It's so much investment now with even losing another spot so even with a gray setup and I don't see that happen. So you can still go some form of spell suppression and just get the spell suppression is lucky note but that will not help you against potential one shots just because you were unlucky and the spell suppression just did not proc good. We are reaching the halfway point of the map so monsters are like a 50% Del as of right now. So the things like nio shrines and stuff for the extra resistance and the extra damage and movement speed does definitely help but I'm I'm feeling so unsafe with this build right now that I'm always proing random portals so if I die uh I'm I can somewhat get back right and this is like not how this supposed to work out so let's do this alion over here I mean obviously EK ignite or any form of like

ignite, proliferate, and stuff like that for Legion clearing is super nice and insane, but I just hope that I don't get instantly blown up here. Yeah, I got a hit, almost dead, 'cause the thing is like, you just don't have any armor. So, all I'm having in terms of physical damage mitigation right now is the cloak of flames, right? I could potentially get Searing Heat of Worlds implicit to, you know, get like a couple extra physical damage taking as fire, but that's pretty much it, and it's just not enough. But endurance charges with Searing, like with Al'Akir, I'm not a big fan either because of these modifiers of fires of, um, you have less recovery rate and stuff like that per endurance charge you have, or less defense per frenzy charge, and so on and so forth, and I think this would just naturally kill your build if you one-time hit the wrong modifier on top of that, right? So, it's just, it's just not that great. But as you see on the

harder side once we get to the end of the deli mirror um it just like makes me question why did I even uh build this together but and the thing though is I tested it and this is something I really wanted to do both with the breaker and with the Mah subtle Shield today and I can just now say that I don't like it and uh that's why I'm kind of like recommending the old glass Cannon attempt of EK ignite more or less so let's stop the deli mirror because now it's getting like really rough maybe we get like a 50 splinters yeah 53 and a tainted or of fusing at least something and obviously I wanted to share my uh thoughts on it so the question is obviously what's going to be next and I think since I was um I I still want to stay with the ignite cuz I [ __ ] love ignite right but the thing is like I wanted to go for um either life stacking burning ERA with a new bases and a new life rolls or EK

ignite or explosive Arrow ballista, but for me, I made the decision to go EK over burning Arrow just because of the circular clear because it's very, very nice. Uh, for something like Del breach and something like that, you just have the better AOE coverage more or less, right? Um, but since it Des an EK now and I don't like it, I'm probably going to just go next. Um, The Burning era version so I can compare those two with each other and see how that feels like, and then yeah, give you guys another update. Uh, on the future progression of whatever build, uh, it is going to be good. All right, guys, thanks for tuning in, thanks for watching, and see you on the next video.

[PATH OF EXILE | 3.25] – MAHUXOTL’S MACHINATION & DAWNBREAKER TRY-OUTS ON EK IGNITE!

mbXtreme

Reworking EK Ignite Build for Better Defense

25 patch nerfed EK Ignite's defensive aspects, making it more of a glass cannon.

The new tanky version focuses on damage shifting to mitigate cold and lightning damage, effectively providing triple elemental resistance.

The build prioritizes the Tempered by War Keystone, Dawn Breaker, and Watcher's Eye modifier for Purity of Fire to achieve 100% conversion of cold and lightning damage to fire.

Strategies for Achieving High Elemental Resistance in the Game

Prioritize achieving 90% fire resistance while also capping cold and lightning resistance to minimize damage taken.

Using the "Divine Flesh" keystone and modifiers can help convert a portion of cold and lightning damage to chaos, allowing for a focus on maximizing fire resistance.

The reworked Val pact poses challenges for energy shield (ES) regeneration, requiring alternative methods such as using Breathing Jar to spawn worms and restore ES.

Building Around Life and Energy Shield Leech for Effective Gameplay

Valak's blocking necessitates a focus on life and ES gain for effective gameplay, rather than formal skills.

The build revolves around leech, with a focus on mana reservation efficiency to sustain casting while also utilizing the Everlasting Sacrifice for a buff.

Despite trying various options, including divines for cluster jewels and gear, the most effective approach remains centered on leech for sustainability.

Improving Delirium Mirror Farming in Path of Exile

Farming the Delirium mirror in Path of Exile can be challenging due to the increasing difficulty of monsters and high damage output.

Building a tanky character for this may not be worth it, as it can lead to frequent deaths and stun locking.

Instead, focusing on a glass cannon build with high damage output and ignite resistance can be more effective.

Investing in affordable scarabs like Niko and Delirium can be a cost-effective way to sustain maps for this farming method.

Ineffective Gameplay and Build Challenges in Path of Exile

The player struggles with a clunky character that is unable to tank hits, despite being a supposed tanky version.

The build requires a significant investment in spell suppression and offers little life recovery, making it too squishy for harder content.

The character's feeling of unsafety is leading to constant portal use, deviating from how the build is supposed to function.

Reconsidering Legion Clearing Build Options

The speaker is dissatisfied with the current build's lack of physical damage mitigation and the negative effects of certain modifiers on endurance and frenzy charges.

They are considering switching to an EK ignite or explosive arrow ballista build for better area coverage.

The speaker plans to test the burning arrow version next and provide an update on the build's progression in the future.