[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Crucible Builds (3.21)

Path of Exile Best Crucible League Builds

Updated:

05 Aug 2023

5 – Goratha’s Boneshatter Juggernaut

One of the last bastions of “true melee”, Boneshatter is a fairly notorious skill for the previous abuse cases with duration, immortality, and Mantra of Flames stacking indefinitely. Though most of it got removed or tuned down, the skill remains a staple for STRONK melee satisfaction that is sorely lacking in PoE nowadays. And despite all the whining from players, it’s one of the most played skills in the game, despite being melee.

What Boneshatter Excels in:

Unbelievably tanky
Ridiculously high damage for a melee, chonky character
Respectable clearing, though click intense
True melee

Pick Boneshatter if you Like:

Going back to the true Melee Roots
Hit and stun enemies on the head multiple times, traumatizing them, and yourself
Self-damaging builds that deal more damage the more they hurt themselves.

Boneshatter full details:

Boneshatter works because it gets increasingly more damage based on your Trauma Stacks. And with Divergent Boneshatter, you also gain 1% attack speed per Trauma. Which then gets scaled by Ashes of the Stars, doubling that effect. And when you can easily reach over 200 stacks of Trauma, this is a massive amount of damage.
It doesn’t come without a cost, though, and it’s why almost entirely, Boneshatter builds are relegated to being Juggernauts, with a few exceptions. For each Trauma stack you have, you take increasingly more damage, reaching over 300 Trauma damage per Trauma each time you gain a Trauma Stack.
As such, you need insane levels of Physical damage mitigation through armour, generic PDR, or even Transcendence. And that’s why Jugg is so great at dealing with that because it is by far the tankiest class in the game for Physical damage.

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u86_1qW8AZQ

4 – Goratha’s Lightning Arrow Champion

Goratha is famous for making strong starting builds that can do all content on a budget and SSF. This one is no exception, and his build guide is so thorough that you won’t feel lost at any point. He takes a different spin to the ‘Bow League’, and instead of going Deadeye like most did, he went with the tanky monster that is Champion.

What Goratha’s Lightning Arrow Champion Excels in:

Fantastic Clearing
Super Tanky
Great single target
Perfect for League Starting

Pick Goratha’s Lightning Arrow Champion if you Like:

Bow playstyle
Zooming but also taking a punch without keeling over
So many projectiles on the screen you can barely see

Gorathat’s Lightning Arrow full details:

The first thing you want, and the most important one, is a strong bow. You want a Deafening Essence of Wrath, preferably on a Fractured Bow. Thicket is the best base (you don’t care about going crit with this variant). Thanks to Crucible Trees, you want to go for the highest eDPS possible, and it’s quite easy to reach over 1200 eDPS.
As I said, we aren’t going crit, so we use the Precise Technique Keystone. As such, you want to make sure you have more Accuracy than Life values to use the 40% More Attack damage. That’s quite easy to do while levelling, and will carry on being easy as long as you pay attention to it.
The endgame of this build uses the reworked Abyss uniques, Shroud of the Lightless and Bubonic Trail, to gain a lot of life, elemental penetration, and Mana Reservation Efficiency. This allows you to allocate a 3rd 50% aura (Anger or Wrath) for even more damage.

For more information, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjZqVx1-KQ

3 – Von Vikton’s Ice Spear Totems Hierophant

Now this a build made for low budget that can scale insanely high with some minor-ish investment and almost plays by itself. It’s not the best fit for everyone since Totem playstyle is an acquired taste, but it can do all content easily if you know what you’re doing.

What Ice Spear Totems Excels in:

Great to League Start
Insane single Target damage
Simple to play, but not for everyone
Clears rather well
Can do all content in the game, including Uber bosses.

Pick Ice Spear Totems if you Like:

Totem playstyle
Dealing dozens and dozens of millions of damage
Hiding in a corner while your totems do your dirty work

Ice Spear Totems Hierophant full details:

This build makes excellent use of one of the new uniques added in patch 3.20, the Anathema ring, so your curse limit equals your maximum Power Charges. And because we’re a Hierophant, we quickly get 4 Power Charges, which is a simple and elegant fix to stacking as many curses as possible.
And that is quite impactful because of the changes GGG made surrounding curses and how they are no longer reduced in effect against bosses, even if numerically, they’ve been mostly ‘nerfed’. So Anathema allows us to use Frostbite, Elemental Weakness, Sniper’s Mark and a long-forgotten curse that rose in popularity, Punishment, for massive extra damage against enemies at low life.
We’re also making use of both Coward’s Legacy (the biggest bulk of single expense, besides the helmet with Ice Spear Enchant, which is massive for DPS) in combination with Self-Flagelation and Soul Mantle, which not only grants us an extra totem and a 7th link to our primary skill but also grants over 160% increased damage(up to 20% per curse on us), as well as enabling Pain Attunement for ‘free’. All you need to do is get curse effect reduction on yourself.

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_WXjmfeb4

2 – Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista Pathfinder

Now this a surprise of a build that no one really expected to be this good, but it took the meta by its horns thanks to Ziz’s prowess and popularity. It’s a solid build that builds upon a skill already somewhat notorious for great league-starting and melting bosses, but not everyone was too fond of for one reason or another. However, this requires a hard-to-get Crucible Passive to work, but when you have it, it’s glorious.

What Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista Excels in:

Unique build pathing
Good clearing with Ballistas
Awesome single-target damage with correctly set up builds.
Quite Tanky with 100% Flask uptime

Pick Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista if you Like:

Ballista playstyle
Poison with PF (prolif)
Easy-to-play builds

Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista full details:

This build revolves around a specific Crucible passive tree that allows all damage from Artillery Ballista and Blast Rain to Poison, and 25% of the time, those poisons will deal 100% more poison Damage. So this essentially reads as 25% more Poison Damage.
The caveat is that though ALL damage CAN poison, it doesn’t mean it will. So you still need a 100% chance to poison. However, because All damage CAN poison, you can scale Elemental Damage (or Physical) from all gear and bow, getting insane 1200eDPS + bows, which will feed into the poison at 25% more value than before.
We also use a cool tech from the last league, Wilma’s Requittal, that makes it so all of your cast speed also applies as Attack Speed. So this means that buffs like Onslaught (which can be massively increased by Flask Effect from Pathfinder by using a Silver Flask) that grants 20% MS/AS/CS, will double the amount of Attack speed it provides. Other things like Frenzy Charges work the same, and that’s a massive boost to damage since poison builds love stacking as much attack speed as possible.

For more information, check here: https://youtu.be/AYwDZOGRpJw

1 – Chaos Strength Stacking Power Siphon/Kinetic Blast Berserker

If you’re Jeff Bezos, this is the sort of build you can sink your teeth in and spend as much as you want, and it will scale infinitely with investment, reaching over 200 million DPS.

What Chaos Strength Stacking PS/KB Excels in:

Ludicrous amounts of damage
Fantastic Clearing
Amazing single target
Tanky and essentially immortal, as nothing can kill you since it’s already dead.

Pick Chaos Strength Stacking PS/KB if you Like:

Min-maxing to your heart’s content.
Attribute Stacking builds
Destroying whole screens of mobs within the blink of an eye
Have Ubers Per Second amount of damage!

Chaos Strength Stacking PS/KB full details:

As with all Chaos Strength Stacking builds, they revolve around Battlemage’s Cry, The Iron Fortress, Iron Will, and of course, Replica Alberon’s Warpath, for its insane amount of Added Flat Chaos, Increased % Attack Damage, and all the other benefits from stacking Strength.
You want the strongest ring possible, and if you can afford it, a Kalandra’s Touch to mirror your ring, so you don’t have to craft two!
It’s the sort of build where the Mageblood isn’t even the most challenging piece to acquire, so it’s perfect for whoever wants a long-term project and a massive currency sink, as it will gobble up your Divines like no one’s business.
We use two attack setups, one for Clearing, Kinetic Blast, and a powerful pseudo-8 link pair of Gloves, with Power Siphon in there, for our single target.

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMS0jpyZVps