[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Melee Builds (3.21.0b)

Updated:

24 Apr 2023

5 – General’s Cry Shield Crush

Shield Crush has a few variants of how it deals damage, similar to Spectral Shield Throw, as it scales based on your shield attributes. It can also get a ton of Crit, if you have a lot of ES from your shield and some specific items, like Ashes of the Stars or Dialla’s Malefication.

What General’s Cry Shield Crush Excels in:

Insanely Tanky.
Great clearing.
Fantastic Bossing.
Can do all content.

Pick General’s Cry Shield Crush if you Like:

Shield bashing your enemies into Oblivion
Have minions rise from the ground and kill your enemies for you
Clear as you Shield Charge away

General’s Cry Shield Crush full details:

Shield Crush works in two ways. First, it’s one of the few attacks that scales exceptionally well with levels, and as such, it’s a great league start skill to pick. Secondly, all the damage is based on your shield. The more armour or evasion your shield has, the more damage you’ll deal. Any 2k+ armour shield will easily carry your damage to over 4 million at late game, on a budget!
The Emperor’s Vigilance grants a bucket load of Armor and Energy Shield, which then enables some excellent mechanics for Divergent Shield Crush since it scales its crit damage with ES on shields. Combining it with Ashes of the Stars and Dialla’s Malefication will increase its base level (needs a +4 total to reach the next damage threshold) and its quality, which grants Crit Multi.
You’ll also want Corpse Walker boots, as it generates corpses for your General’s Cry to work everywhere without having to cast Desecrate all the time.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/dbdbdbdbdbdbdb2/%E9%98%B3%E5%85%89%E5%B0%84%E4%B8%8D%E5%88%B0%E7%9A%84%E5%9C%B0%E6%96%B9%E6%AC%A7%E5%B0%BC%E9%85%B1%E5%8F%AF%E4%BB%A5?time-machine=week-3&i=4&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DBerserker%26skill%3DDivergent-Shield-Crush%26sort%3Ddps

4 – Strength Stacking Volcanic Fissure Chieftain/Juggernaut

It comes as no surprise in a league where it’s possible to get Sanctified Relics that give you flat damage per 10 attributes, (fire, cold and lightning-based respectively on 10 strength, dexterity, and intelligence) that Strength stacking would resurge like it did, and one of the best Strength stacking classes in the game, Chieftain is all the happier to stack further damage.

What Strength Stacking Volcanic Fissure Excels in:

Great for Sanctum
Can clear rather quickly
Tanky
Reaches millions of DPS
Sanctified Relic can almost double your damage.

Pick Volcanic Fissure if you Like:

Letting your totems do your work for you
Enjoy carnage as it unfolds in front of you
Play Attribute Stacking Builds.

Volcanic Fissure full details:

As a strength-stacking attack build, we obviously make use of Iron Fortress, as is the best Strength-Stacking chest piece, which enables the combo with Crown of Eyes and Battlemage’s Cry, giving us over 900% increased Attack damage, since we have over 1900 strength.
Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler is a no-brainer and what the build revolves around. You want one with Attack Speed corruption to go as fast as possible. This build also got massively buffed by the use of Vengeant Cascade, as it now doubles the balls from the fissure!
Another way of getting a lot of damage with a high price tag would be to get 2 Forbidden Jewels for Undeniable, which makes it so you essentially have 100% chance to hit and a lot of attack speed for free, due to your high Strength count.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/boxcutter245/Zheka_TOTEM?time-machine=week-3&i=3&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DChieftain%26skill%3DVolcanic-Fissure%26sort%3Ddps

3 – Molten Strike Dex Stacking Raider

Another build that got massively buffed by the Vengeant Cascade and the interesting changes to Breach uniques this league, which used to be a boring and crappy unique claw that only served to create the famous HoWA, Hand of Thought and Motion is now the de-facto dex-stacking melee weapon. Especially with how Crucible works and the possibilities for augmenting your weapon’s damage!

What Molten Strike Dex Stacking Raider Excels in:

Super zoomy Character
Lots of single-target sustain
Unique gearing, so there are lots of options
Double damage thanks to a new notable

Pick Molten Strike Dex Stacking Raider if you Like:

Attribute Stacking builds
Melee builds that can face tank Shaper Beams
Zoomy build

Molten Strike Dex Stacking full details:

As a dex stacking build, we want as much Dex as possible from the gear and passive tree (what a surprise!). So we want to grab Synthetized %Dex or % Attribute Jewellery for that. It’s also a great idea to get fractured items with Dex on them to roll the rest of the item, guaranteeing the Dex needed for your damage.
We stack Dex because Hand of Thought and Motion grants 1 to 11 Lightning damage per 10 Dex. At over 2000 Dex, we have over 2200 Lightning base damage per claw.
The way Vengeant Cascade works with Molten Strike is that when you hit an enemy with the balls, all of those balls attempt to return to you, but they all overlap, shotgunning the boss since you are usually standing right on top of the enemy. And because we attack so fast and have so many projectiles, we deal massive amounts of damage, especially with Point Blank!

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Hycl/Hycl?i=0&search=class%3DRaider%26skill%3DMolten-Strike%26sort%3Ddps

2 – Frost Blades Trickster

One of the builds that most benefitted from the new Vengeant Cascade changes, while also being a strong league starter, Frost Blades’s power comes from the reworked Heatshiver and many melee changes to the passive tree in the last few patches.

What Frost Blades Trickster Excels in:

Great League starter
Insanely Fast clearer
Strong single target (Doubled this patch)
Very comfortable mapper

Pick Frost Blades Trickster if you Like:

Noticeable curve of progression
Buttery smooth gameplay
Freezing and exploding whole screens
Projectiles flying everywhere

Frost Blades Trickster full details:

The build makes use of Heatshiver, a reworked helmet that essentially adds up to 130% of Cold damage as Fire. Since we are a full cold build, we just get massive damage boosts to our attack.
Not only that but with the changes to Vengeant Cascade that GGG made in this league, all of our projectiles return, piercing everything in their path. So, in essence, you will deal twice the damage to a single target, once on the way out and another on the way in.
One of the biggest issues Frost Blades had was its single target, though you could definitely get respectable numbers. Thanks to the fact that GGG hasn’t touched Nightblade yet, to the surprise of many, it was still hard to gun down bosses in a respectable manner. But with the ‘new’ anointment, that’s not the case anymore.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Kpacyc135/Icy__Prince?i=3&search=class%3DTrickster%26skill%3DFrost-Blades

1 – 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.

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://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Tenyasha1/Gopstoper?time-machine=week-3&i=0&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DJuggernaut%26skill%3DBoneshatter%26sort%3Ddps