Hello everyone and wellcome to my guide for a perfect (questionable) first build when a new league starts in Path of Exile.
If you're not already playing on scrubcore, and enjoying a bit of deathless action this should be your thing, probably. Most of us are not like the popular streamers and actually care, and take a big shock when your character dies on hardcore, so this is just a helpful guide to achieve that. Note that if you're new to the game, some of these things might be confusing, but fear not, I believe I explained most things in detail.
First of all, you'd want to take a MARAUDER, since they have all the mandatory and useful life nodes close by their starting point. Years ago energy shield meta died, so life is the way to go now. The basic keystone you'll need right away is Resolute Tehnique, and your primary goal is by the time you reach level 12, and the ability to use Sunder (which is given as a quest reward for entering Merveil's Caverns in Act 1.
Once you got those you better find yourself any, and I mean ANY two-handed mace or axe to use Sunder with. If you're not lucky finding any nice leveling uniques, you can always buy the best current base from a vendor, or find a white drop and throw an Orb of Alchemy on it.
Personally I would advise two-handed axes, because they scale attack speed much better then maces, and since your endgame weapon will be an axe, you'll save on refund points/regret orbs.
In the case you're lucky enough in the first few hours of the league and drop some Chaos orbs, you can get yourself some decent leveling uniques that are pretty cheap the first day.
One more thing for the first part is the Bandit rewards in Act 2. You should kill both Alira and Kraityn to help Oak, for which will grant you 1% of life regeneration, 2% additional physical damage reduction and 20% increased physical damage. All of that will be useful since you should grab by the end of Act 2 the Blood Magic keystone and the big life nodes after that (Mortal conviction).
As for the gearing, your goal is to keep your ressistances up to 75% at all times (because this is not scrubcore, and people are allowed to die there)
You should be looking for:
- gear your level or lower, don't buy gear that you'll eventually equip (sometimes you don't get the chance to)
- armor (all your gear slots should prefferably be pure armor base, but if you can't find those since it's the very first few days, hybrids like armor/evasion should be okay as well)
- flat life (that is +xx life, not +xx% life)
- elemental ressistances, the more the better (find an item or two with chaos ressistance as well)
- flat physical damage (can be found on amulets,rings and gloves + some uniques as well)
- % increased attack speed (not mandatory, but can help with a slight damage boost)
This is an easy one, straight up Juggernaut. After you complete all storyline trials located through acts while leveling, you should be soon ready for the big money maker, the Uber Lab. But first, in order to access it, you should've completed all 3 previous ones, Normal, Cruel and Merciless Labs. If you missed or forgot some, you can always find their locations on the wiki page https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Trial_of_Ascendancy.
The Normal lab is the easiest, with no traps and the final fight and you should be taking the Unflinching node, which will provide you with an additional Endurance charge. When you complete Cruel lab, finish the path to Unrelenting by which you should probably have a total of 7 endurance charges (3 basic, 1 from ascendancy and 3 from skill tree, Vigour, Endurance and Stamina nodes). For Merciless lab, take Unstoppable which allows you to remove your anti-freeze flask, since you cannot be slowed bellow base movement speed, you can't be frozen.
Here is the part where most people just make the mistake of taking two options from which neither is cost efficient nor viable later on. Since you completed all 3 labs, and killed Kitava in Act 10, you are free to swtich from our leveling skill sunder to our main skill Cyclone. Usually, players just take one of the two high dps unique axes, which at the first few days of the league can be pretty expensive, yet don't provide the endgame viability. My recommendation is to look for a clean 6linked white two handed axe with an item level above 60 (needed to roll the Cruel or Tyrannical mode). They cost around 10-15 Chaos, and you can easily roll them with a decent 400+ physical dps. This is more then enough to tackle Uber Izaro.
Now that you're all set it's the first or second day of the league and you're doing maps. Again, forget the mainstream talk about not making chaos recipe. You should consider having a few stash tabs just for stashing low tier bases for the recipe. It will help you to get your basic mapping gear if you happen to have a bad league start or somehow die. Your main focus should be clearing low tier maps really fast, like just run through and look for Uber Lab trials. While doing this, always keep the Global 820 chat open (chat specifically made for sharing trials and help with league challenges). Completing them will grant you access to the hardest and most rewarding lab, and also the final ascendancy node, which will be Unyielding. Rewards are based a bit on your luck, and the amount of keys collected. I would strongly recommend doing full runs (all Darkshrines and Puzzles) for the best possible outcome. As for the Izaro fights, you should usually avoid Dual swords, since that can one shot you in most cases if he's got an additional damage mod. Aside from that, Charge Disruptors are a big no no and the rest you can all tank easily. You can always check the layout on https://www.poelab.com which resets together with the lab at 01:00 AM every night.
Some people might disagree, but through the years since Ascendancy update came out, I learned that this is the most profitable way in the first days and even weeks of a league to make currency. At first I was terrified of it, because on hardcore, there are plenty of ways to die, you don't need one more which requires you to enter voluntarily. But this build provides a huge amount of defensive stats which minimize your chance of dying. You can outregen maximum stacks of corrupted blood, stand in desecrated ground and literally walk over Uber lab traps like it's nothing. I would highly recommend this for any player who is trying to give hardcore a shot or usuall players tired of making new characters constantly. Now go out there and get those shiny Treasure Keys for some amazing loot.
Thank you all for reading, and I hope you find it useful ^^