[Top 10] Path of Exile Best Sanctum League Builds (3.20.2)

With Sanctum League coming to an end, and with it not going core, for now, there are several builds that were only possible with the exclusive uniques in the game, like Eternal Damnation and the Original Sin ring, and with Sanctum gone, those won’t exist anymore. So here is a collection of the best performing builds in The Forbidden Sanctum.

10 – Righteous Fire/ Fire Trap

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After the nerfs to Inquisitor, though still a strong choice for RF, Juggernaut gained massive popularity thanks to Pohx, especially if you enjoy being immortal and still killing enemies by attrition, this build is for you!

What the RF/Fire Trap Jugg Excels in:

• Safe Bossing
• Insanely Tanky
• Can clear quite quickly with Maven Boots
• League Starter, HC, SSF Viable

Pick Righteous Fire/Fire Trap if you Like:

• Cruise through maps without a care in the world, and nothing hurt you
• Ignore all downsides and survivability issues most people suffer with degens and ground dots
• Clear as quickly as you Shield Charge, with everything exploding around you.

RF/Fire Trap full details:

• RF works by dealing damage based on our ES and Life pool. We scale as much HP as possible to increase the base value, which in turn gets increased by our supports. We aim to use a Pseudo 6/7-Link helmet, with Concentrated AoE, Burning Damage, and 30% more elemental multiplier from Essence of Horror. Which is absurdly expensive to craft, but it’s BiS.
• Our defenses come from Brass Dome, which grants us a whopping 5% max all res, scaling max res in the passive tree as well as using a Saffel’s for another +4%, to reach 88% max fire res and 87% cold and lightning resistance.
• As a secondary source of damage, we use Fire Trap. You can either slot it in the 6L Brass Dome (look for good corruptions, like +2 Duration or +1 all), or in the helmet, with the Pseudo 6~7 Link.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/OG_IMMORTAL/OG_RF?time-machine=week-3&i=0&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DJuggernaut%26skill%3DRighteous-Fire%26sort%3Ddps

9 – Wardloop Ascendant

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Made extremely popular in both Archnemesis and Sentinel League, this archetype revolves around a few unique mechanics to create a self-sustaining loop of carnage that will essentially play by itself. It’s a fun build though not for all tastes.

What the Wardloop Excels In:

• Fantastic clearing
• Great single-target damage
• Auto-targeting, walking simulator
• Easy and fun to play

Pick Wardloop if you Like:

• Unique specific mechanics
• Self-damaging builds
• Clearing without having to attack
• Spending as much as you can and yet still needing more money.

Wardloop full details:

• The build revolves around the Olroth’s Resolve unique Iron Flask, which makes your Ward permanent while it’s in effect (and thus you want to have 100% uptime on it), at the high cost of a 70% less Ward modifier.
• This means you need a lot of Ward to make this effective, as you cast spells through self-damage. And you ignore that damage entirely, because you have a large Ward pool (which is never broken because of the flask), but still triggering your Cast When Damage Taken.
• The spell-feed-loop works (and it’s a delicate balance) with two To Dust jewels with the perfect amount of Reduced Skeleton Duration, and a Catalised Heartbound Loop (hence the build’s name), which damages you when a minion die. And we cast skeletons when we take damage, which are instantly ‘killed’ because their duration is almost 0, thus proccing the Heartbound Loop, and all our spells in a self-perpetuating loop.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/alvinnguyen011/Alvinnnn?i=13&search=skill%3DCreeping-Frost%26sort%3Ddps

8 – Hexblast Mines Saboteur

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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.

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 full 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://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/t%EC%97%86e%EB%A7%91%EC%9D%80i/%EC%84%9C%EC%9C%A8%EC%89%90%EB%8F%84%EC%9A%B0?i=4&search=class%3DSaboteur%26skill%3DHexblast%26sort%3Ddps

7 – Explosive Arrow Ballista Ignite Elementalist

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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.

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.

EA Ballista Ignite full 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://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/gladkopls/Pain_Sanctum?time-machine=week-3&i=3&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26skill%3DExplosive-Arrow%26sort%3Ddps

6 – Cast on Crit Ice Spear Occultist

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This is what CoC Ice Spear looks like when you have a near-infinite budget and can toy around with one of the best and most broken uniques introduced in this league, Nimis. It’s a ring that makes it so all projectiles return to you, regardless of their travel. This means they can also double-hit and shotgun. However, it comes with a drawback (which isn’t a big drawback depending on the skill): it fires your projectiles in random directions.

What Cast on Crit Ice Spear Excels in:

• Insane clearing.
• Buttery smooth gameplay. You kill as you spin.
• Amazing single-target damage.
• Can clear all content.

Pick Cast on Crit Ice Spear if you Like:

• CoC Builds
• Clear as fast as you move
• Demolish all content

Cast on Crit Ice Spear full details:

• Nimis, as I said before, makes it so all your projectiles fire in random directions and then return to you, hitting enemies on their path once again. And since Ice Spear is an exceptionally quick projectile, and Sniper’s Mark creates over a dozen more projectiles with Nimis, you’re dealing, by sheer virtue of projectile count, a buttload of damage.
• You can either go with a Cospri’s Malice as your weapon, or you can use a dagger with Vagan Mod to not worry about Accuracy at all while also getting a ton of good benefits, like Crit Multi, Crit Chance, +1 to all Cold (levels for spells are the best to increase their damage) and attack speed.
• That is important because there are certain thresholds you wanna reach with CoC builds, those being 7.57 and 10.10 attacks per second (with all buffs active). So you need a quick weapon to reach that attack speed threshold (and not go over it), as it will significantly ruin your damage. So aim to get it as close but UNDER the point. As well as getting a ton of CDR, with 52% being required for 10 aps.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/phasegrenade/CallMeKermitTheFrog?time-machine=week-3&i=1&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26skill%3DIce-Spear%26item%3DNimis%26sort%3Ddps

5 – Blade Vortex

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An old favourite of many, Blade Vortex remains a fantastic clearing skill. With proper investment, it can grind down any boss. In addition, it’s a lovely skill to just explode entire packs to smithereens and run over their corpses.

What Blade Vortex Excels in:

• Zoomy build
• Dozens of millions of damage, when adequately invested
• Clear as fast as you walk

Pick Blade Vortex if you Like:

• Builds that make you zoom faster than light
• Massive chain Explosions.
• Perfect for multiple MTXes.
• Lots of boom booms

Blade Vortex full details:

• You’ll want a Sacrificial Garb, as Vaal Blade Vortex scales supremely well with Levels,  and this body armor is why it can clear so effectively. A rare crusader mod, with Enemies killed have a % chance to explode, can delete entire packs in the blink of an eye. You can also use a Redeemer for more Aura Effect and then Awakener’s Orb them together.
• Since gem levels are the best thing possible, you want a Bow, preferably Synthetized with either +1 Gems or 18% Double Damage implicit. Then it’s just a matter of Essence of Woe Spamming until you get Crit Multi, and annulling until you only have the % Spell Damage and the Crit Multi. This way, you can then get a +3 (or +4 with the implicit), Bow with Crit Multi and even more chance to Double Damage by using Multimod.
• Since we’re Aura Stacking, one of the best items in the game for us is Ashes of the Stars, which can make all our auras and skills shine with their Alternative Quality, by boosting them by 30%!!

For more information, check: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Imthemaster/Ericgo?time-machine=week-3&i=10&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DOccultist%26skill%3DBlade-Vortex%26sort%3Ddps

4 – Poison SRS/Spiders Necromancer

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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 Spiders/SRS.

It requires a few unique items to work, and though this one has a Mageblood, you can do without it. Just gonna be a lot harder to cap resistances while also getting fully spell suppressed.

What Poison SRS/Spiders 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.

Poison SRS/Spiders full details:

• While Spiders have inherent chaos damage, Summon Raging Spirit does not. It also has 50% of its 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. But since we’re doing Spiders and use Arakaali’s Fang, we have no poison chance from our sword anymore. This means you must get 100% through Ghastly Jewels and utilise the Chance to Poison gem. It does come with some extra added chaos, but not much, and this means you’re losing one of your strong supports.
• And your spiders, curiously enough, get summoned while mapping because the Poison kill counts as yours, just like with the traps, and so you don’t need to keep casting while mapping to clear insanely quickly since the spiders are much faster than SRS!

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/ohnoes4/Snknsss?time-machine=week-3&i=0&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26skill%3DSummon-Raging-Spirit%26item%3DArakaalis-Fang

3 – Venom Gyre Accuracy Stacking

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In a similar but different fashion to the Lightning Strike, this one uses a Squire to achieve its damage, and though it isn’t as strong as the last one, it is much tankier and a lot less likely to die randomly, being a much more well-rounded build.

What Venom Gyre Accuracy Stacking Excels in:

• Superb Clearing
• Respectable single target
• Extremely tanky

Pick Venom Gyre Accuracy Stacking if you Like:

• Attribute Stacking
• Zooming like the Flash
• Scaling your damage through unconventional means.

Venom Gyre Accuracy Stacking full details:

• This variant uses The Squire to have an alternative 9Link, as well as scaling as much Accuracy as possible through some intelligent use of Precursor Emblems and Simplex Amulets
• It is also a currency sink regarding jewels, as it will use over 10 of them, even 3 Transcendent Spirit, to scale as much Flat Accuracy, reaching over 45k Accuracy!
• Of course, you’ll need Stormrider Boots, Obscurantis and Oskarm gloves, as those are the best Accuracy stacking uniques in the game, since they give you % Projectile damage, Flat Lightning Damage, and % Attack Crit Damage, all based on our Accuracy.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/turdtwisterx/FAT_FOREHEADED_FUCKFACE?time-machine=week-3&i=0&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DJuggernaut%26skill%3DVenom-Gyre%26sort%3Ddps

2 – Chaos Strength Stacking Power Siphon/Kinetic Blast

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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, possibly 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 attacks 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://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/X_MrMiracle_X/DivineStrengthStacker?time-machine=week-3&i=1&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DBerserker%26skill%3DPower-Siphon%26sort%3Ddps

1 – Poison Spark Occultist

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With the introduction of Nimis, and the resurgence of poison builds, combined with the vastness ‘overpoweredness’ of Occultist, it makes sense Poison Spark would also return to the meta. And all you need is an Ashes, a Nimis and a Mageblood (I’m kidding, you don’t need a MB, wink-wink).

What Poison Spark Excels in:

• Fantastic Clearing
• Great at Sanctum, can hit behind walls.
• Insane amounts of damage.
• One of the best Maven Invitations Farmer because of the arena.
• Quite tanky.

Pick Poison Spark if you Like:

• Instantly exploding everything in sight
• Dealing millions of damage without a worry in the world
• Purple Explosions with Profane Bloom

Poison Spark full details:

• Nimis makes it so all projectiles you fire go off in random directions at the benefit of them returning to you at the end of their flight. This means your sparks will hit the enemies very often because whenever they bounce, they reset their enemy count, and then once again, when they come back to you.
• And you need Ashes of the Stars to increase your Phantasmal Spark’s quality to over 50%, meaning you get to convert 100% of your lightning damage into chaos, enabling the total damage of your spell as a poison application.
• You also use the borderline broken Incandescent Heart interaction with CI, making it so you take 25% reduced elemental damage for free. And not only that, but you also gain 20% of your Elemental (Lightning) damage as Chaos, for even more poison damage.

For more information, check here: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/poepenguin/sanctPenguin?time-machine=week-3&i=0&search=time-machine%3Dweek-3%26class%3DOccultist%26skill%3DSpark%26item%3DNimis%2CIncandescent-Heart%26sort%3Ddps

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