Path of Exile 3.25: Exploring EK Ignite Build on Lower Budget

mbXtreme experimented with different Path of Exile builds, ultimately settling on a new EK ignite character for better gameplay.

### Building a New Path: From Strength Stacking to EK Ignite (PoE Build Update)
* 🏋️‍♂️  The creator started with a Setic Strike Chief Tain strength stacker, but grew tired of the playstyle and decided to switch to a **strength stacking Righteous Fire build**.
* 🔥  The Righteous Fire build turned out to be disappointing due to **low damage and flask dependency**, leading to **frequent deaths**.
* 💡  After considering other potential builds, the creator settled on a new version of Ethereal Knives (EK) Ignite, focusing on **unique defensive mechanics** rather than traditional armor stacking.
* 🧙‍♀️  The new EK Ignite build is designed to be **tanky** despite the recent nerfs to **Determination, Grace, and other defensive mechanics**.
* 💰  The creator invested in specific unique items to achieve **66% physical damage taken as fire**, and is experimenting with a new approach to **maximize fire resistance and damage conversion**.
* 📊  Despite being in the early stages of development (level 82, no cluster jewels, basic gear), the new EK Ignite build shows **promising clear speed** and **potential for high damage output**.
* 🎮  The creator is excited about the build's **potential for endgame content** and is looking forward to **further optimizing and testing it**.
* 👋  The video ends with the creator thanking viewers and signing off, expressing **anticipation for future updates on the build's progress**.

hey guys, and welcome to a new video. Today I want to showcase my new build and especially talking about what happened yesterday and today, basically, and just to answer this question mbx, what happened to your strength stacker. So there is like a bigger history, a longer story behind that that I want to go over because every time people ask for what happened, I can just link this video so they know exactly what is up. So okay, where do we start? Basically, strength stacking. I was playing the Setic Strike, Chief Tain strength stacker, had an amazing time. I was doing all my Atlas, basically right, all the completion. I started to scry my defiled Cathedral onto the Jungle Valley since I finally found the seer in defile Cathedral, did all my favorite Maps. Yeah, up to this point, the only thing that's left is basically Ubers. I even did t17 on my static Striker, which is an auto bomber, right, and then after some

time. I was like, man, I kind of get bored of pressing, you know, uh, the war cries, you know, enduring cry, battle Maes cry, and then into Ambush to Target, then static strike, and then get the chain reaction going, and like this piano playing. I was kind of getting tired of it, so I said like, I want to play or I want to, um, try something different, um, I want to stay on the strength stacking, but I want to play something lazy, and I decided to, to do strength stacking righteous Fire. So I still have some footage from the, the video that I recorded yesterday for today, but honestly, um, it's basically me just showing off the righteous Fire strength stacking and why I'm unhappy with it, and then I was like, yeah, but uploading a video just to rant about a build that didn't work out the way I wanted it, uh, wasn't really a way to go for me, so I just, you know, go with the flow, just didn't upload anything. It's just started to level a new character, but this video

should also be about the new character and what I'm playing right now. But first of all, what happened now here. So basically I sold the um replica, the replica alurn war path, and my iron Fortress, and some other um things from the static Striker to then get the um the Ivory Tower. And then we basically um get a lot of strength and intelligence and Reserve all of our um life basically to get a lot of energy Shield. As you see here on this like early gearing part, this was like about a 20 30 divines investment over here. Um I was already on like 13,000 es, right. So the goal was just to get a lot of es and get the strength stacking and then basically um just get a bunch of like large cluster jewels and scale insane amounts of damage and uh basically normally lowlife characters are playing with a chabon's rapping unless you play with a corus skting elex. Here this is a purple flask over here. The problem is once this flask

wears off you're instantly dying, and this is like the main reason what pissed me off so hard yesterday cuz my damage was very low. I'm going to show you a map showcase as well here, um, but my damage was so low. I was just um spamming Scorching Ray and standing like the boss in the Righteous Fire, but you know my flasks just were off. And yes, I know there is ways to fix that with like only playing with three flasks with a different Keystone and stuff like that, but I just don't want to do that because obviously in the very late game I want to play with Headhunter or Mageblood or anything like that or maybe different keystones so I don't want to rely on this one Keystone to make a functional build right. And I died like so often actually with this build just because my flasks were off. So I was like so mad, and then on top of that um just having absolutely no DPS character was tanky obviously but uh that's pretty much it.

and then I was like, Okay, what are we going to do now? You know, I just sold my replica Alberon, I sold my Iron Fortress. Do I buy it again? Do I just go back to Static Strike? I kind of regret the decision even trying out Righteous Fire at this point with a low investment on strength stacking. But you know, lesson learned. I got finally to play with the Caros Kiting Alex here, and I decided for myself that I'm never ever going to play this combination again unless with this one Keystone where I can permanently sustain it. But let's check out a little bit of gameplay here. Um, it was like a T16 map, so you see how that basically looked like. Uh, if I actually make this full screen and mute this one, I mean, it's like two BMB exes here, right? So lean back. I mean, it's Righteous Fire gameplay, but um, with the Chief T Explody, and the goal was basically to make like an explode RF Auto Bomber, basically right? But this one.

is a non-explode just a chief Tain uh what you say um ascendency for explode, and my damage was already so bad because once you want to go explod the RF, then you kind of have to sacrifice a lot for like single Target and stuff like that to get the extra Herald of Ash in, and so on and so forth all this like monor reservation efficiency fixing so it's going to be more expensive and worse in single Target, but better clear obviously, but you know it it just wasn't really the thing as you see the monsters are just they are dying as soon as something explodes, but as I said it just wasn't my take so then I was like wait a second we talked about um the potential ignite strength stacking character whether it's Val earthquake whether it's um Shield charge ignite anything like that right, and somebody linked me a forum post from like two or three years ago where somebody tried strength stacking replica alberon's war path and then go Elementalist all damage can ignite and

then use the black flame ring to so that the enemy basically takes chaos damage instead of fire damage. And that was basically the goal. But from this forum post, the guy said it doesn't work. And it actually makes sense because what Replica Alberon's Warpath say. Let me quickly put this up. Alberon's uh, wait, there is the Forum post cuz the goal was actually now. Actually I want to stay Chief Tain but use surface hard so our chaos damage can freeze shot and ignite right. So if we take a look at the Replica Alberon Warpath, they say cannot deal non-chaos damage. So the thing was like get a black flame ring and the monster takes chaos damage instead of fire damage and stuff like that. But the thing though is your the ignite you're inflicting is still fire damage right. You're still scaling the fire damage the ignite with fire do multi and and stuff like that. The enemy just takes chaos damage so the core damage is still fire and and gets

disabled by the replica albron so this idea was gone. You know, and then I was like, man, I just want to play something with Ignite. I want to play a lazy build, you know, one-button explode everything. And here we are on EK ignite. So there was like three builds that I was thinking about. It was in one hand the explosive Arrow ballista that got Nerf 'cause Champion Nerf, but I would have played as Elementalist. Then a potential burning era of vigor based on a new life rolls on the armor pieces and stuff like that. And maybe a new version of EK ignite because the problem is EK ignite got heavily nuked, right? Determination flat armor got nerfed, Grace got nerfed, hatred got nerfed, divine blessing got completely removed from the game. So there is a lot of things that got completely gutted on the build. And that's why I definitely didn't want to think about the new EK version. But yesterday I was so unhappy with the

RF, and then I was like, you know what boys, I'm just going to go offline now. I'm just going to, you know, do some PoE work, think what I'm going to do while waiting for sales. And then I came up with a completely different version of EK ignite, and this is this one here. So, the new version is not having any determination or Grace. It does not have spell suppression, but what I try to do here is taking a Cloak of Flame and get like the physical damage taking as fire damage instead of stacking armor, basically, right? So, I have like 40% over here, then 20% on the Shield is 60%, and on my helmet, I have like the implicit, so it's 66% physical damage taken as fire damage instead of determination. And since the new meta of getting a tanky build would be spell suppression, endurance charges, maximum resistance, like what does an Elementalist right now get, like literally nothing. It doesn't get endurance charges, it doesn't get spell suppression, like only a very few

bits over here, and it doesn't get maxr because all the maxr notes are on the bottom side of the tree. Spell suppression is over here, um, and endurance charges are also like, um, until like here in the Slayer point. So maybe can get this one, but it's not about getting enough endurance charges, right? So that's why Witch is currently in a very, very bad state when it comes to defensives. And if we, um, take a look at po ninja, we're currently seeing the Elementalist being at 1%, like basically all the witches and like a couple Summoners, but witches are kind of like terrible at the moment, right? We have just have Slayers, we have Gladiators, we have Tricksters, we have J's, we have Chieftains, we have everything, you know, um, from the tanky side on the bottom side. It's M league, so what about EK then, right? Cuz the items are insanely cheap right now. Nobody gives a [ __ ] about any ignite.

build. That's why I said, like, I think I can make a very interesting character for a lower budget. And there is another take to it. Since I cannot get armor, as I said, that's why I'm going to be taking as much fire as good as possible. But there is another thing. We cannot get maximum resistance, so I decided I'm going to run this now with a P of fire and a Ruby flask to try to get as much maximum fire resistance as possible because of the physical damage taken as fire to reduce the physical damage mitigation. But also, they removed the physical damage taken from the Purity of Fire Watcher's Eye. Instead, they now have cold and lightning damage taken as fire damage. And that made me think if I get cold and lightning damage taking as fire plus I get cold and lightning taking as fire on my Dom Breaker as well. And we get the Keystone with Tempered of War. I can get up to 90% cold and lightning damage taken as fire. And when I get to 90% maximum resistance at some point.

uh, this might be like a VAR that was my loot filter. Sorry then, I might get to a very, very, uh, defensive kind of thing. So, but still missing like spell suppression and stuff. But this is like a complete different take. As you see over here, we running replica Amber wake, we run, uh, Dawnbreaker clo of flames, uh, and, um, the march of the Legion, which is the only remaining pair of boots that have the divine blessing. So, I opted in for that. And this is also a reason why I scrapped the idea of getting spell suppression kept at all, just because this is one less spot, you know, we usually only had like gloves, boots, uh, and the helmet for getting spell suppression with a Grace Watcher's eye with, um, for example, an impossible escape to get some more spell suppression over here. But now with even missing another, um, slot here for spell suppression, I think we can, um, completely ignore that fact. So, this is like a very basic concept art right now. We're not even, I just leveled up this character. We're level 82 right now. We

have like eight hours play time. Uh, we haven't died yet, right? Death and we killed about 56,000 monsters. I still have to do Uber laap. I don't have any cluster Jewels yet. Uh, I don't have any mediums. Um, I don't even have fand of flam. So I just, um, got like the cheapest version of an ignite spread over here. Um, wait, is a large class of jeel missing a medium class of jewels missing? Uh, what else is missing? Yeah, this, like, it's very basic and no a Gloom Fang, no nothing, right? So this is very, very basic. No polaric Devastation. So I'm going to show this in classic, like any yellow tier map. Um, let's get Dunes going, and I just want to showcase how EK looks like on this kind of lower budget. If you're thinking, bro, you [ __ ] run a plus three, um, chest over here. This is basically where pretty much all the currency went, um, for, um, what I had from

my strength deck. I'm having like five divines or something. I still have a couple things for sale but maybe like 20-30 divines. So whereas the other 70 divines from the Head Hunter cell, it's basically 70 divines on this chest. And then I also spent quite some divines on this Watcher's eye over here but it's like an experimental thing so who knows, right? And my weapon here is an exploded sword because of the Runesmithing. They kind of have the barracks respite mod with the kill um an ignited enemy and inflicted equivalent ignite on each nearby enemy. It is a one-handed sword, um, Runing enchant. So I said like I want to have maybe a sword since I'm playing with the Dawnbreaker. Um, and I got this exploded sword for like four divines today. But the problem is you don't get anything. I have like flat lightning, flat fire, cast speed from the essence, and I actually capped my resistance with my weapon. So you know, just putting in an obliteration.

wand will have you even better results, but maybe and when you do some multimod fire is extra chaos, similar as we crafted the bow basically for EK ignite, and we maybe get something out of it. Or there is even more things that we could try with this new unique. Hammer is a unique item that can have, I think, two or three enchant, so we can maybe do something with 100% reduced Soul game prevention. There is, bro, there is so many things that we can try out on this, and maybe with all despite all the nerves to hatred and stuff like that, we can still make a very, very decent EK ignite character, because honestly after playing now a Slammer build and now going to something like this is completely ridiculous, right? So the clear is so insane, the leak mechanic can be done in like two or 3 seconds. I mean, my damage is still kind of bad, but you know, you just stand there and you just Hammer your EK, and nothing even comes close to you, right?

more ignite damage we get the better, and the more satisfying it will get. And um, there is even for people that still want to use a bow, there is a fire exploding mod that you can craft with the curan runesmith thingy, right? So you would, you would even save on the explodo if you want to still, uh, go that way. But at the moment, it's more or less just like a leveling kind of thing, right? I'm just going to try to get some levels. Uh, I still need to do laps, and for everybody that plays, um, class like ignite builds, they, uh, know that, you know, cluster Jews is like the biggest damage increase on these kind of like ignite builds. And not running anything, you know, it's just like a bad showcase. But still, I wanted to showcase the, um, what it currently looks like, right? And once you pick up a speed Shrine or something like that, you know, this 360 clear with Ignite proliferation with, um, the what is it, um, exploding mod and stuff like that, it is so freaking

good. I'm having so much fun. This is like, you know, I don't need to like press 150 war cries to try to get anything going. I can just move around and just press like one button and uh, and just have fun, basically, right? Can we get like a nice strand maybe? Um, another thing here, um, the increase duration is now more duration, right? So my, um, my divine blessing with like this one Mastery that did last 50% longer, just one use case is like 30 seconds of Melo valence, um, so that's actually even more quality of life, but I'm super interested and curious on how this is going to like continue to play out, basically, right? So now we, we have have some action here. We got a speed Shrine, so now we can just run through, just Hammer this this one button, have a 360 clear, um, the what is it strong boxes are super nice to do with this kind of build because of the proliferation, the red little circles on the floor, so basically you just open that thing, move away, and

the rest should just basically die. Even if you open it multiple times, it will be just a lot better once we start going into the um, what is it really like t16 Al modifiers having like [ __ ] tons of monsters thinking about doing um, what is called delirium. All right, this is a double Divine orb, and this basically means I have found now three Divine orbs. Damn it. Okay, this was unexpected. Divine orb two and three in the map showcase. Lovely. But as you see, boys, this is like every Slammer build and whatnot can go f themselves. If you compare this to something like this, you know you play The League mechanic, you just stand there. If I have wait, I'm crushed. Damn, I have no energy Shield. I'm not El immune. God, there's so many things to fix, but usually you just stand here and hold down EK, and you just kill the leak mechanic off, and you get your gold within like, I don't know, like a couple seconds. And yeah, this is like really.

looking forward if this version is going to hold up, and basically, uh, be able to do like all the hard content as it used to be. Maybe this version can become even tankier and stronger as EK ignite ever was. Still based, uh, like after the nerves and stuff like that, right? So yeah, this is my update for today. I need to get some rest now, uh, and try to figure out, uh, what we're going to do, work on more pubs, uh, and just like min-max this build a little bit further to then start grinding and, uh, get all the stuff together and see where we're landing and if we were able to farm t7s, uh, with this kind of setup. All right, guys, thanks for tuning in, thanks for watching, and see you in the next video.

[PATH OF EXILE | 3.25] – STRENGTH STACKING OUT & EK IGNITE IN – SETTLERS LEAGUE UPDATE 1!

mbXtreme

The Frustration of Transitioning to a New Build

The speaker transitioned from a Setic Strike, Chief Tain strength stacker to a strength stacking righteous Fire build, but was unhappy with the results.

They invested heavily in energy shield and large cluster jewels to scale damage, but encountered issues with low damage and flask dependency, leading to frustration and frequent character deaths.

The speaker is reflecting on their recent gaming decisions, including trying out Righteous Fire with low investment on strength stacking.

They are now considering a potential ignite strength stacking character after being inspired by a forum post from a few years ago.

However, they realize that the proposed strategy may not work due to the nature of the damage and the mechanics of the game.

Reimagining EK Ignite Build in Path of Exile

The speaker was initially disappointed with the nerfs to EK Ignite build due to changes in the game.

However, they have come up with a new version of the build, focusing on converting physical damage taken to fire damage using Cloak of Flame and other gear.

The Elementalist class is currently struggling with defensive capabilities, as reflected in its low representation in the current meta, with the speaker highlighting the challenges of playing a Witch in the game's current state.

Creative Character Building in a Role-Playing Game

A player is developing a unique character on a low budget, focusing on maximizing fire resistance and damage mitigation.

The character setup includes using specific items and keystones to achieve 90% cold and lightning damage taken as fire.

Despite being in the early stages at level 82, the character has not died in 8 hours of playtime and is yet to acquire essential items like cluster jewels and Gloom Fang.

Player discusses using various divine items, experimenting with different weapons, and transitioning to an EK ignite character in the game.

They explore the potential of the unique hammer item and the satisfaction of increasing ignite damage.

The player also highlights the importance of cluster jewels for ignite builds and showcases the impressive clear speed with Ignite proliferation.

The player is experimenting with divine items and a unique hammer to transition to an EK ignite character with a focus on increasing ignite damage.

They emphasize the importance of cluster jewels for ignite builds and showcase the impressive clear speed with Ignite proliferation and exploding mod.

The player is currently using the setup for leveling and highlights the significance of speed Shrine for clear speed.

The Excitement of Improving My Gaming Build

The duration of divine blessing has increased by 50%, improving the quality of life for the character.

The build is now able to handle difficult content and has the potential to become even stronger.

The player is looking forward to further optimizing the build and grinding higher-level content.