As with every new league, GGG brings out the big guns in forms of new and crazy uniques that fundamentally change the meta or improve upon it, in one way or the other. And here’s a list of the best five of them!
5. Rakiata’s Dance
This massive sword (that looks like someone’s compensating for something) might look like just a regular sword at first glance, but it holds a special power never seen before in the game.
The line that says ‘Treats Enemy Monster Elemental Resistance Values as Inverted’ is a bit confusing at first glance, but it’s rather simple. If the monster has 50% elemental resistance, when you hit it with that sword, it will be like as if it has -50% resistance.
And because it’s a sword with a high eDPS and quite hard-hitting, you can deal insane amounts of damage while also not caring at all about messing with the enemy’s resistance or even penetration, though that does work together, just at a lower rate.
What makes Rakiata’s Dance Great:
- Having a solid weapon that allows you to not care about the enemy’s resistances at all.
- One of the best weapons for fighting Uber Bosses, as they have a ton of resistance and curse effect reduction.
- Extremely high eDPS, reaching over 1000 elemental DPS on a good rolled one.
How to get Rakiata’s Dance:
- It has drop restrictions and currently the only form of obtaining is by winning matches against Tasalio Tribe in the Trial of the Ancestors.
- One of the best ways of scaling the damage from this sword is by combining it with a long-forgotten and ignored unique Abhorrent Interrogation, which makes enemies take 4% increased damage per wither stack applied recently. And since you can get up to 15 Wither stacks if you attack quickly enough (or use wither totem), this means a net bonus of 60% increased damage taken, and since it’s applied after everything, it’s essentially a 60% multiplier to your damage!
4. Utula’s Hunger
If you are a long-time player of PoE you might recall this insane body armour called Kaom’s Heart, when it used to give 1000 Maximum Life. At that time, it was by far the best equipment since we didn’t care about the downside that much, of having no sockets on the body.
Well, after it got gutted to 500 Max Life, and sockets became more and more mandatory for damage and survivability, especially auras, it fell out of favor.
This body armour, though, is a completely different beast. You can still reach the 1000 life if you get a lucky roll, and that comes with a massive benefit that you don’t lose any sockets to use it.
The caveat here is that you cannot have any life modifiers on your basic gear at all. Life Regen, Life Regen rate, life gained on kill, Life gained on Hit, nothing. If you do, you don’t get the insane amount of life.
But this means if you can make sure you don’t have ANY life modifiers in your build, you can still use a ton of uniques that have no life, but are otherwise really good, and not feel bad for missing life slots, as the Utula, on a good roll, will have more flat life than even maxed out gear with all slots having max life rolls on them!
What makes Utula’s Hunger Great:
- Highest base life equipment in the game.
- Allows for a ton of builds and equipment diversity.
- Lets you search for items without life, which are generally not sought after, and thus cheaper.
How to get Utula’s Hunger:
- Just like Rakiata’s Dance, it’s a Trial of the Ancestors drop-only body armour. You need to defeat the Kitava Tribe during the tournament to have a chance at getting one.
3. Warrior’s Tale
This is definitely a unique made with the intent of you becoming as tattooed as your favourite rapper. It’s a simple enough item that will double the effect of any tattoo within its radius, and it’s a rather large radius.
With great positioning on the passive tree, it might simply make your build become insanely strong, or make it so tanky you will never die to anything.
It’s a new puzzle that PoE players love to solve, and it has the potential to improve on an already extremely strong mechanic that is tattoos.
What makes Warrior’s Tale Great:
- One of the best forms of magnifying an aspect of a build you want to focus on.
- Allows you freedom of both defence and offence.
- Promotes Build diversity.
How to get Warrior’s Tale:
- It’s one of the completion rewards from Navali in TotA, when you win a whole tournament. It’s a common enough reward but rare enough to be worth farming for.
2. Replica Dragonfang’s Flight
This is probably my second favourite amulet in the game. I like to call it ‘Baby Ashes’ as it fills a similar role to Ashes, but instead of nuanced power through getting extra Quality on your Skill gems, it allows you to grab +3 to any skill in the game.
This means, that for nicher builds, that don’t see a lot of play, you can suddenly just get an amulet that will boost your damage by around 40%, if it’s a skill that scales well with gem levels, like spells.
You also get some much-welcomed Mana Reservation Efficiency, as well as an often forgotten or underrated stat of Item and Gems Attributes requirement reduction. This allows a much easier time equipping things you need high attributes for.
What makes Replica Dragonfang’s Flight Great:
- Promotes a ton of build diversity.
- Nearly impossible to beat with a crafted +2 Amulet, by a fraction of the price.
- One of the best ways of scaling Gem Levels.
How to get Replica Dragonfang’s Flight:
- Despite its name, it’s not a Replica unique from Heist. It’s a global drop unique that you can get anywhere.
- It has no dedicated Divination Cards yet, as it’s a new unique.
1. Defiance of Destiny
By far the most insane item added to the game since Mageblood was introduced. This amulet, though it’s a tough slot to compete in, with Crystalized Omniscience and Ashes of the Stars, and now Replica Dragonfang too is the sort of amulet that will make an already tanky build, that has no sustain or recovery, to become veritably immortal to hits.
It has really weird wording, and the way it works is quite unintuitive, but in essence, it means that each time you get hit but don’t die, you take less and less damage and recover more and more life.
You need mitigation sources to truly benefit from this amulet, like high armor, spell suppression or maximum elemental resistances, but if you got those, you will be nigh immortal!
What makes Defiance of Destiny Great:
- Allows builds that couldn’t survive to become insanely tankier
- Gives a ton of damage mitigation by itself
- Great to farm for profit
How to get Defiance of Destiny:
- You can get it by completing TotA tournaments, just like Warrior’s Tale. It is quite rare but a fantastic drop.
