[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Forbidden Sanctum Builds That Are Powerful (3.22.1)

Updated:

30 Sep 2023

With the return of the Forbidden Sanctum, a whole meta was established again surrounding builds that can tackle one of the hardest and most rewarding content in the game. It’s all about speed and single target damage that doesn’t require you to stand still, so you can dodge skills and instantly burst down bosses.

5. Palstrom’s Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite Elementalist

Obviously one of the best builds in the game, both for league starting and Uber Bossing farming, EA Ballista ignite has dominated the meta with the sheer ease to deal millions of damage while running around and dodging skillshots. And because it’s a totem skill that lets you drop the ballistas behind walls, it’s amazing at Sanctum.

What Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite Excels in:

Tankyness.
Can reach the DoT Cap (~37 million damage) easily.
Very cheap to get started with, and can do all content
Perfect for league start.

Pick Explosive Arrow Ballista if you Like:

A jack of all trade build
Clearing all content in the game without issues
Drop your damage and run around like a headless chicken!

EA Ballista Ignite details:

Because of how Elementalist works, any source of flat damage becomes fodder for your ignite damage. As such, you’ll want as much Flat damage, physical, chaos, elemental, doesn’t matter, as possible. In fact, you don’t want Flat Added Fire damage to attacks because that would brick Elemental Equilibrium and cost you millions of damage.
The name of the game for EA is attack speed, combined with Faster Ignite. You must reach 20 stacks on the enemy, explode, and then do it repeatedly. The more ballistas you have, the quicker you get there, increasing your overall damage per second.
Since the ballistas can cost a lot of mana, as EA has one of the highest base cost skills in the game, you can either use Lifetap or go with a Devouring Diadem. It also helps increase the amount of damage you deal, allowing you to fit in an extra aura and providing you with a lot of damage with a Focus button.

For more information, check here: https://youtu.be/x2U0lKR1HvQ

4. Von Vikton’s Ice Spear Totems Hierophant

Now this a build made for low budget that can scale insanely high with some 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. And just like the previous builds, totems are king in Sanctum, and Ice Spear can easily reach over 200 million Uber DPS.

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 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=uA6ATfMkWBM&ab_channel=VonVikton

3. BalorMage’s Poison SRS

While not necessarily a new build, it became popular thanks to Balormage. As such, people took the build and threw their own spin to things. And thus was born Poison SRS.

It requires a few unique items to work, and some jiggery pokery with poison chance for minions, but it excels in Sanctum because your minions are super aggressive and will hunt down enemies while you hind behind walls!

What Poison SRS Excel in:

Insane single-target damage
Extremely Tanky
Fantastic clear
One of the best Sanctum clearers in the game
Doesn’t need much to start but excels with investment.

Pick Poison SRS if you Like:

Tiny little minions that demolish brutes with thousand little bites.
Reach Dot Cap on a minion build with nearly no investment
A one-button build

Poison SRS details:

SRS has 100% of Physical damage converted to Fire, which is a wasted stat for us, since Poison only scales off of Physical and Chaos. So the way to get around that is by stacking as much Flat Added Chaos damage as possible. And the strongest poison Body armour in the game does exactly that. With The Covenant, you get a whopping Level 29 Added Chaos gem. That’s basically 3x an Awakened Chaos damage gems as a free 7th link!
Most builds use United in Dream, which gives your minions a 60% chance to poison, so you’d only need 40% left to make it work. You get that through Ghastly Jewels combined with the unique Ghastly for even more DoT Multi for minions.
One of the cool things is that because you’re using Eldritch Battery, you can use a Divine Blessing + Vaal Haste to have insane movement speed, both for yourself and for your little skulls!

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASf98VLyXTo&ab_channel=BalorMage

2. Jorgen’s Hexblast Mines Saboteur

This funky build uses some weird mechanics to get as much life as possible while also getting damage scaled off of that life. It can reach some impressive damage, and for those who enjoy mines, it’s downright OP, as well as being perfect for Sanctum.

What Hexblast Mines Excels in:

Fairly Tanky
Insane single-target damage
Scaling life and getting damage out of it
Can do all content
Quite the budget option if you need it to be

Pick Hexblast Mines if you Like:

Pre-laying all your damage and instantly exploding your enemies with a single detonation
Smart use of niche mechanics to scale your damage
Mines playstyle

Hexblast Mines details:

We scale as much life as possible because Rathpith Globe, after the buffs to it in 3.19, started scaling our Spell Damage and Crit Chance for Spells in a 1:20 ratio. With a single item, you can get over 320% increased Spell Damage and Critical Strike Chance for Spells. It does come with the downside of making your mines cost life.
To circumvent that and increase the amount of life we have, we use Dissolution of Flesh, a unique Jewel from Searing Exarch that grants up to a 30% MORE multiplier to our life, and makes it so all damage we take become reserved instead.
This enables a different playstyle that might suffer from DoTs but is great at taking single big one-shot hits and not dying.
Hexblast itself works by consuming a curse when it triggers, and with over 20 mines on the ground, you need a quick way of applying said curses. Thus, Profane Proxy. It makes it so the curse you put in is applied constantly by the Skitterbot of your choosing, and makes it so all triggers of your mines have the 100% more multiplier damage.

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4lpQD2teE&ab_channel=Jorgen

1. Shockwave Totem Hierophant

The de-facto Sanctum Clearer, capable of No-Hit Runs back in Sanctum League is making its return as the Destroyer of Lycia. It’s a build that can reach over 500 million UBER Dps with proper investment, and with it’s auto-target and instant casting, it just bulldozes through anything in Sanctum.

What Shockwave Totem Excels in:

Ubers Per Second level of DPS.
Can be min-maxed to oblivion
Capable of No-Hit Runs for Original Sin Farming
Freezes anything and everything instantly.
Insane Range and auto-targeting.

Pick Shockwave Totem if you Like:

Getting Rich in Sanctum
Demolishing any bosses in the game within seconds
Insta-phasing enemies

Shockwave Totem details:

Shockwave Totem is a Physical Spell skill that deals damage around it and knocks enemies back. By itself, it’s a pretty crappy skill. But with the introduction of Astral Projector, it became a viable skill, that instead of hitting its Nova around itself, it then centers and targets enemies from afar.
We convert 100% of the Phys to Cold, through several different means and budget level. Then we get 100% of that damage and gain it as Fire with Heatshiver, as long as the enemy is frozen. And any Gains Phys to Extra is massive, because the base number for Shockwave Totem is crazy high, especially because you want to scale its Gem Level as high as possible.
To as many gem levels as possible, you want a Dialla’s Malefaction, with Empower, and a Divergent Shockwave Totem, which, with an Ashes at 30% increased Quality for Skill Gems means that you can reach 100% Phys Conversion to Cold without any other investment!

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wScwypVwOU&ab_channel=AzmaDoppler