[Ultimatum] PoE Pathfinder Blade Vortex Fast Endgame Ranger Build

This PoE 3.14 Ultimatum Pathfinder Blade Vortex Ranger build is an exceptional all-rounder, capable of speedclearing maps, pushing deep delves, quickly farming uber (and uber-uber) lab and safely clearing all the endgame content in hardcore (e.g. Awakener 8, Cortex, Uber Elder, Aul).

Quick Jump

Pros & Cons

 

Skill Tree

Ascendancy: Veteran Bowyer -> Nature's Boon -> Master Alchemist -> Nature's Adrenaline

Pantheon: Solaris and shakari

Bandit: Kill All

Passive Tree & PoB

Path of Building Link

Lvl 94 Phase acrobatics + Wind Dancer, realistic non-Harvest gear: https://pastebin.com/0GdD6vdg

Lvl 99 Divine flesh + armour and shield, realistic non-Harvest gear: https://pastebin.com/91Sm1EHB

 

 

 

 

Gems Setup

Note: The awakened gems are NOT necessary at all for the build to perform well. It's just some min-maxing when you have nothing else to do

Body: Vaal Blade Vortex - Unleash - Hypothermia - Intensify, Concentrated Effect, Awakened Cold Penetration, Awakened Controlled Destruction, Empower 

Helmet: Flame - Arcane Surge - Bonechill - Vortex

Weapon(Trigger): Frost Bomb, Purifying Flame, Frostbite / Elemental weakness

Shield:  Shield Charge - Fortify - Faster Attacks

Boots: Vaal Righteous Fire - Increased Duration - Vaal Molten Shell - Second Wind

Gloves: Vigilant Strike - Faster Attacks - Ancestral Call - Fortify

 

Gear Setup

Helmet

Core unique for the build. It allows you to receive a ton of increased spell damage by spending mana, which the build easily sustains. With good gear, you can easily spend an average of 1k mana per second while keeping your mana pool filled, which gives 500% increased spell damage (4k mana spent recently, which is to say in the last 4 seconds). You can also choose to aggressively spend all your mana and beef up that bonus to over 1000% increased spell damage.

Indigon also causes your enduring mana flask to recover as much life as it recovers mana. This gives the build fantastic recovery of both pools, which indirectly leads to another 40% more spell damage because righteous fire can be comfortably sustained.

Finally, it causes your mana flask to instantly recover life when you press it, so you can spam it like it's a life flask when you're in really dire straits. Between the instant recovery and the permanent recovery, there's no need for a life flask on the build

Lab enchantment: My enchant is just some vaguely useful mod I put on my indigon myself. If you have the choice, BV duration, damage and AoE are all relevant and on a similar power-level in my opinion. There's also the smoke mine +30% movement speed enchant which makes fitting in smoke mine really worth it.

Budget alternative

Indigon is eventually very cheap in trade softcore, but it's not immediately available at the start of the league. In hardcore, it can take a while before it appears on the market, and the first ones are expensive.

I unironically wore a skullhead before the first indigon appeared on the market

A more tryhard alternative would be a rare helmet, armour base, with life and ideally mana, good resistances, and the betrayal crafted mod "% of physical damage taken as fire", or a similar temple helmet.

If you are in SSF or in trade hardcore, and indigon really doesn't want to drop, and you still want to work on the build (it's completely viable, just a lot less damage), you could invest into a redeemer helmet with the mod "nearby enemies have -9 to cold resistance"

Body armour

+12% to all Elemental Resistances
-------------------------------------------
+107 to maximum Life
15% increased Mana Recovery rate
+34% to Chaos Resistance
15% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Lightning Damage
Enemies you Kill Explode, dealing 3% of their Life as Physical Damage
+34% to Fire Resistance

This is the final chestpiece I settled on. With an awakener's orb, I combined the explodey mod from a bad crusader base unto a redeemer astral plate with the mana recovery rate mod, and the rest of the affixes were harvest-crafted. Thanks to harvest recolouring, it is extremely easy to have six off-colours on an astral plate (if harvest does not go core, this becomes a possible but very expensive endeavour).

Budget alternatives:

If an awakener's orb is too expensive, you can settle for a crusader chest with the explodey mod and the physical damage taken as lightning mod, a life roll and resistances. All you would lose is the redeemer suffix, but it would still be a fantastic chest for the build.

Weapon

40% increased Elemental Damage
---------------------------------------
22% increased Cast Speed
+128 to maximum Mana
+1 to Level of all Physical Spell Skill Gems
Gain 20% of Physical Damage as Extra Cold Damage
Hatred has 40% increased Aura Effect
Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill

Not perfect, but very good weapon for the build. The hatred effectiveness mod is the single best affix you can get on a weapon for this build (it adds 18% more BV damage to my current character while also scaling the explodey chest)

Budget alternatives:

Whatever you can get your hands on honestly. The best mods, in approximate order depending on tiers, are hatred effectiveness, +1 gem level to BV, phys gained as cold, % increased cold damage, spell damage (doesn't scale explosions, unlike cold damage), cold damage as extra chaos damage, cold penetration, and flat cold damage to spells. Mana and hybrid mana/spell damage are also desirable.

As a sidenote, crusader weapons can be a source of phys conversion to cold (up to 30%). If for some reason you cannot reach 100% cold conversion by other means (no watcher's eyes, in SSF for instance), you can replace a redeemer sceptre with a crusader sceptre with that mod, or you could combine them with an awakener's orb.

Shield

+40 to maximum Life
-----------------------------------------
+99 to maximum Life
+3% to maximum Chaos Resistance
+24% to Chaos Resistance
+2% to all maximum Resistances
+2 to Minimum Frenzy Charges
5% chance to deal Double Damage

Great double-influenced defensive shield for divine flesh. The hunter mods cap your max chaos res to 90 by themselves, which removes the need for a Born of Chaos small cluster jewel, and raise max elemental res to 77. The redeemer mod contributes to having 3 permanent frenzy charges on the build, which in my case freed up a suffix slot on the chestpiece to roll mana recovery rate instead.

Budget alternatives:

Ahn's Heritage, Saffell's Frame

Amulet

Allocates Aqueous Accelerant
+16 to all Attributes
-----------------------------------
9% increased Cast Speed
+106 to maximum Life
+20% to Chaos Resistance
+1 to Level of all Dexterity Skill Gems
+1 to Level of all Physical Skill Gems
+1 to Minimum Frenzy Charges

Double-influenced hunter and warlord amulet for +2 blade vortex gem level. The prefixes are exactly what you want, but the suffixes could be a number of different and possibly better things, such as %increased cold damage and bench-crafting +1 to minimum frenzy charges

Budget alternatives:

Instead of a double-influenced +2 gem level amulet, you can settle on a single-influenced +1 gem level amulet. The +1 amulet can also be recycled in the future to craft the +2 amulet if you get enough currency. The temple "cold leeched as life" mod is very useful until you have doryani's lesson on a large cluster jewel

Rings

One ring is essence worm

This is very cheap and best-in-slot for the build. It allows us to use hatred without reserving any mana (otherwise it would reserve 75% of mana due to supreme ego), and even gives +2 gem level to hatred.

The other ring is a rare

+16% to Fire and Cold Resistances
-------------------------------------
8% increased Cold Damage
+92 to maximum Life
2% increased maximum Life
+74 to maximum Mana
+33% to Cold Resistance
+39% to Lightning Resistance
19% increased Damage

This ring isn't too spectacular. It's got great pool, good resistances, and a mediocre cold damage roll. For a discussion about the frostbite on hit mod, read below.

The main priority for this slot is a ring with good life, mana and resistances. Your item base can be a two-stone, amethyst or prismatic ring if you need the resistances, a vermillion/cerulean ring for extra pool and an opal ring for extra damage. Fertile catalysts for extra pool, prismatic catalysts for resistances and turbulent catalysts for elemental damage are all good catalysts. Ideally, you want to specialize your ring around the type of catalyst used; only use prismatics if you desperately need the resists, use fertiles for a generic life+mana ring, and probably only use turbulents for something like an opal ring with a fat %increased cold damage roll on it.

Belt

Has 1 Abyssal Socket
+116 to maximum Life
+40% to Fire Resistance
+30% to Chaos Resistance
30% increased Flask Charges gained
28% increased Flask Mana Recovery rate
Flasks applied to you have 7% increased Effect

For a more advanced belt, ilvl 84 redeemer, hunter, or shaper stygian vises are great bases

Good hunter mods are:

• 7-10% increased maximum Life. Combined with fertile catalysts, this results in a beefy life belt
• 10% chance for Flasks you use to not consume Charges. Decent flask sustain mod, although the RNG portion is not ideal.
• Gain a Flask Charge when you deal a Critical Strike. Not as crazy as it sounds as there is an internal cooldown on this effect, but still an excellent flask sustain mod, even as non-crit (blade vortex hits often and has good crit chance, even with controlled destruction)
• (6–10)% increased Movement Speed during any Flask Effect. Great mod as it's always active.

Good redeemer mods are:

• Flasks applied to you have (8–10)% increased Effect. Better than the 8% increased effect bench craft, and frees up a bench-crafted mod
• (26–30)% increased Cold Damage. Scales the explodey chest.
• (36–40)% increased Damage with Hits against Chilled Enemies. Better damage but slightly more conditional than the previous mod.
• (16–20)% increased Mana Recovery rate. Insane mod for a simple belt suffix.

Good shaper mods are:

• You take #% reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes
• #% increased Mana Recovery rate
• #% increased Spell Damage during any Flask Effect
• #% increased Movement Speed during any Flask Effect 

Gloves

+17 to Armour
+99 to maximum Life
+18% to Fire Resistance
+47% to Cold Resistance
+36% to Lightning Resistance
50% increased Damage with Hits against Chilled Enemies
25% of Physical Damage Converted to Cold Damage

For the other mods you want life, mana if you can/want, and resistances.

To min-max it further, hunter gloves can roll "(7–10)% chance to Unnerve Enemies for 4 seconds on Hit" as a prefix, and warlord gloves can roll Culling Strike as a suffix. For max DPS, use an awakener's orb to combine unnerve and culling strike on the same item.

The temple mod "+(46–48)% to Cold Resistance, (30–50)% increased Damage with Hits against Chilled Enemies" is amazing to craft around.

Budget alternatives:

Hrimsorrow. For cheap 50% conversion to cold and not much else. Good if you don't have a conversion watcher's eye.

Flask

30% reduced Amount Recovered
Immune to Curses during Flask effect
Removes Curses on use
30% reduced Duration
Flask Effect is not removed at Full Mana
Flask Effect does not Queue

Eternal Mana Flask

armour flask and movement flask

Taste of Hate, The Wise Oak, 

Jewels

Watcher's Eye: #% of Physical Damage Converted to Cold Damage while affected by Hatred

if possible, try and get another relevant hatred mod (cold penetration>cold damage>added cold, crit is real good if you're crit)

Unnatural Instinct

Not necessary, but a huge upgrade for the build. The spot near the scion start and the Shaper notable gives 9% cast speed, 24% increased mana, 30% AoE, 20% skill effect duration, and a couple other goodies.

Thread of Hope (Medium)

Lots of damage for the build when placed due left of Templar, especially when it comes to scaling the explodey chest.

Timeless Jewel

Glorious vanity sacrificed in the name of Xibaqua changes nearby keystones to https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Divine_Flesh, which is a huge source of elemental mitigation as long as you cap your chaos resistance. 

 

Cluster jewels

Large Cluster

Corrosive Elements, Doryani's Lesson, Vengeful Commander

Clusters are a huge source of power for this build, providing us with way better flasks, elemental leech, good damage, and life and mana

Vengeful commander is the best damage notable, and doryani's lesson is a source of leech. The only alternative sources of leech are from a glorious vanity notable, a temple cold leech amulet, or a redeemer amulet (which can be good, but no +1 gem level).

Medium Cluster

Distilled Perfection, Spiked Concoction

In order to only spend 5 points traveling through this large cluster

This medium cluster makes an insane difference to the build and is very easy to craft. Alt-spam for distilled perfection (it's a common notable), then augment attack to guarantee spiked concoction. Unfortunately, the alchemist's genius buff from spiked concoction does not stack, so you're limited to only one such jewel.

This could also be liquid inspiration + spiked concoction on a flask duration medium cluster. You'd lose 5% mana recovery from flasks (because of the small node difference) and 14% flask duration, but you'd win 15% increased mana and some power charge generation.

Distilled Perfection, Liquid Inspiration

Second-best medium cluster for the build, and unlike the previous one this one is spammable (if you wanted a whole second cluster setup to go ham on buffing your mana flasks). Very annoying to roll, though. Options include good old alt+regal (very expensive), lucent fossil spam, or alting for liquid inspiration as it's rarer, then remove/add life until it hits distilled perfection (if you do that, buy an ilvl 68 cluster so you can use quarry seeds)

After that, you can either place normal jewels in the jewel socket of your medium clusters (very decent option, especially if short on passive points) or invest into small cluster jewels.

Small Cluster

There are a lot of useful small clusters:Fettle, Liquid Inspiration, Born of Chaos

and other notables like holistic health and blessed.