With the introduction of Trial of the Ancestors, we got a lot of new toys to play with, and one of the best additions to the game to date, as a way to both enable build diversity and fix annoying issues any build has. All in the form of tattoos. And here is a list of the best 10 types of Tattoos in TotA!
10. Honoured Tattoo of the Tuatara
Well, Tuatara fixes that for everyone, at the cost of a small travel passive node!
It can be used in all 3 types, as it’s an Honoured Tattoo, so you can replace the +10 stat to +4 of all. So in reality, you only lose 6 of that stat, but gain 8 of the others, leaving you with a sum of 12 stats instead of 10.
Why Honoured Tattoo of the Tuatara is Great:
- It helps fix attribute problems in builds.
- Amazing for attribute stackers that have to path through the ‘wrong’ stat
- Perfect for Triple-Attribute Stackers.
How to get Honoured Tattoo of the Tuatara:
- Honoured Tattoos can only be gained by winning a tournament in Trial of the Ancestors, as it’s a special reward for winning it, on top of the regular, chosen reward for defeating a tribe.
9. Tattoo of the Ramako Shaman
Just like most other tattoos in added, Ramako Shaman is perfect for rounding off your spell suppression at the cost of a Dexterity Passive. Due to long past nerfs to Spell Suppression acquisition from gear, it became prohibitively hard to get fully spell suppressed without investing several points in the passive tree to supplement the lack of it from gear.
And sometimes, because you can’t always get perfect rolls on your gear, you’d be left with 97 or 98% Spell Suppression and having no other way of getting the remaining %s to round out 100%, which is the much-coveted value, as it guarantees you take only half spell damage from all sources, including DoTs.
Why the Tattoo of the Ramako Shaman is Great:
- It re-enables builds that couldn’t use suppress anymore to afford to slot it in, especially combined with Lucky Suppress.
- It fixes gaps in your equipment without punishing you for it.
- One of the best sources of small amounts of spell suppress that you might need.
How to get the Tattoo of the Ramako Shaman:
- As with all tattoos, you can only get it in Trial of the Ancestors itself, by playing the tournament.
- In this case, you can get it by defeating the Ramako Tribe, which is led by Ahuana.
8. Tattoos of the Ngamahu Firewalker/ Arohongui Moonwarden / Valako Stormrider / Honoured Tattoos of the Dove / Sky
The reason I clumped all of these together is that they all fill the same role, which is to replace a node in your passive tree with a tattoo of the corresponding tribe to get the desired elemental resistance, while the Honoured Tattoo of the Sky gives 3% of all 3 elemental resistances.
However, the Honoured Tattoo of the Dove instead gives chaos resistance, which is extremely hard to come by in most cases, and because it’s an Honoured version, you can use it anywhere you want.
These tattoos not only provide resistance, but in the cases of Ngamahu Firewalker and Valako Stormrider, you can also get other bonuses when combined with Red and Blue Nightmare jewels respectively, which can help you cap your Block and Spell Block chances extremely easily.
Why Firewalker, Moonwarden, Stormrider, of the Dove, and Sky are Great:
- They fill any gaps in your gear and passive tree that you might have for your resistances, particularly for Chaos Resistance, a very hard stat to get in the amount needed to play comfortably and safely.
- Firewalker and Stormrider can also double as a source of Block and Spell Block, making it that much easier to cap those stats, hard things to do that required a lot of investment.
- They are extremely cheap considering how much power they bring to your build.
How to get Firewalker, Moonwarden, Stormrider, and of the Dove:
- All 3 elemental ones you can get by defeating their tribe leader in TotA, and winning a match. Kaom, Ngmahu’s leader for Firewalker–Ikiaho, Arohongui’s keader for Moonwarden–Kiloava, Valako’s leader for Stormrider.
- As for the Honoured Tattoo of the Dove and for the Sky, as it’s an Honoured Tattoo, you can only get it by winning a whole tournament as a special reward.
7. Honoured Tattoo of The Flock
For a long time now, getting as much Aura Effect in your build is the way to go to increase damage and survivability, one way or the other. Aura stackers are known to be nigh immortal and capable of dealing hundreds of millions of damage, and with the addition of TotA, they only got better.
The Flock tattoo will replace any Small attribute passive node for a 1% Increased Effect of Auras. This may seem small at first, but you have to understand that there are certain breakpoints for auras that you need to reach, and these offer something Aura Stackers lacked for a long time. Flexibility in gearing.
With it, you can instead of using Victario’s Influence on your Aurabot, spec into 10 to 15 of these to reach the same threshold that the body armour gave you, but instead use an even better one that will give more survivability or damage.
Why Honoured Tattoo of the Flock is Great:
- Promotes build diversity and enables previously impossible builds
- One of the best ways of scaling both damage and defence in one fell swoop.
- Gives flexibility to certain builds for better equipment.
How to get Honoured Tattoo of the Flock:
- Honoured Tattoos can only be gained by winning a tournament in Trial of the Ancestors, as it’s a special reward for winning it, on top of the regular, chosen reward for defeating a tribe.
6. Tattoo of the Tasalio Makanga
A stat that only had, truly, 2 to 3 ways of scaling their amount in the game, suddenly, in 3.22 gained the ability to reach numbers that were never possible before.
At most, previously, you could only really get around 40% Cooldown Recovery from your gear, unless you were using some horrible equipment, through Influenced Boots and Belts. Some other uniques also granted you some CDR, but they have horrible trade-offs and not worth using at all.
But with the Tasalio Makanga, in certain spots of the Passive tree and with some investment into passives around it, you can get 48% on top of whatever you could get before, by using 3 of them and then doubling with Warrior’s Tale, on Witch Jewel Socket.
Why the Tattoo of Tasalio Makanga is Great:
- Enables previously impossible builds to function.
- Improves a lot of existing builds that struggled to get the required breakpoints in their CDR.
- Provides a stat that you can’t get anywhere else, after a certain amount.
How to get a Tattoo of Tasalio Makanga:
- As usual, by winning a match against the Tasalio tribe’s leader, Rakiata, in Trial of the Ancestors.
5. Tattoos of The Arohongui Makanga / Ngmahu Makanga / Valako Makanga / Honoured Tattoo of the Makanga
Similarly to resistance tattoos, these work mostly the same way, but they can only be tattooed in specific locations. There are certain places in the passive tree that you can abuse that mechanic and then double it with a Warrior’s Tale unique Jewel for 100% effect of Tattoos in radius.
As for the Honoured Tattoo of the Makanga, you are even more restricted where you can socket them, though you can still use a Warrior’s Tale for +4% Max resistance. And note that it doesn’t say elemental. It works for Chaos Resistance as well!
Why the Arohongui, Ngamahu, Valako, and Honoured Makanga Tattoos are Great:
- They are one of the best ways of scaling your elemental defense
- With Melding of the Flesh or by using Chieftain’s new Ascendancy Notable, you can reach 90% easily without even needing a Purity of Ice/Fire/Lightning.
- The Honoured Version not only gives Elemental Resistances, but also Chaos Resistance, which is something extremely hard to come by, with only a few sources of Maximum Chaos Resistance in the game.
How to get the Arohongui, Ngamahu, Valako, and Honoured Makanga Tattoos:
- Just like their resistance counterpart, the Makanga variants of their tribe can be won by defeating the leaders of the Arohongui, Ngamahu and Valako tribes, Ikiaho, Kaom and Kiloava, respectively.
- As for the Honoured Makanga, as usual, only by winning the whole tournament.
4. Journey Tattoo of Makanui
This is one of the tattoos that got added with the Honoured Tattoo of the Makanga, a few weeks after the release of TotA.
Instead of changing a notable or a small passive, this tattoo will re-roll a keystone allocated into another in the passive tree. While that doesn’t sound great or even useful, it has some pretty strong uses if done right, and the price of them reflects that.
It’s one of the only ways of getting a Keystone from across the passive tree without traveling massive distances, however expensive that endeavour might be.
Why The Journey Tattoo of Makanui is Great:
- Promotes build diversity
- Only way of changing a keystone to match what you need, or even to remove one that you don’t want.
- Can be one of the best tattoos in the game for what it can give you.
How to get the Journey Tattoo of the Makanui:
- As usual, by winning a match against the Tasalio tribe’s leader, Rakiata, in Trial of the Ancestors.
3. Honoured Tattoo of the Hatungo
If there’s one thing PoE players like is stacking auras. The more, the merrier. And after the changes to Reservation Efficiency, and by how they’ve tried to balance the amount of MRE you can get, people will do everything to get their hands on a few extra MRE %s.
And this tattoo fills that hole perfectly. As it’s an Honoured, you could, if you wanted and could afford it, literally fill all of your small passives with MRE tattoos. While Mana Reservation Efficiency has diminishing returns, it’s still a strong thing to do to be able to fit in more auras, both for damage and defence.
Why the Honoured Tattoo of the Hatungo is Great:
- Build diversity
- The best source of both offence and defence in a single stat
- Can be used by pretty much anyone (except Blood Magic)
- One of the most coveted stats in the game.
How to get the Honoured Tattoo of the Hatungo:
- Honoured Tattoos can only be gained by winning a tournament in Trial of the Ancestors, as it’s a special reward for winning it, on top of the regular, chosen reward for defeating a tribe.
2. Honoured Tattoos of The Hunter / of The Wise / of the Warlord
It wouldn’t be GGG if they didn’t give us a way of getting even more power to our gems.
It’s not a tattoo you can stack, and it can’t be easily used by everyone without at least using an anoint to grab a +30 passive from across the passive tree.
But the rewards are worth it. You can reach much higher levels to your gems now, and, combined with Dragonfly’s Flight amulet, you can break through previously unreachable levels.
Why the Honoured Tattoos of the Hunter, of the Wise, and of the Warlord are Great:
- One of the best ways to scale spells is by levelling your gems, and this is a nice and easy way of doing so.
- Easy to use with an anointment.
- Very cheap for how much power it grants.
How to get the Honoured Tattoos of the Hunter, Wise, and Warlord:
- Honoured Tattoos can only be gained by winning a tournament in Trial of the Ancestors, as it’s a special reward for winning it, on top of the regular, chosen reward for defeating a tribe.
1. Tattoo of the Ramako Makanga
Definitely the most expensive and strongest tattoo in the game, by far. And the reason is quite simple. With it, you can completely ignore the need of using a Less Damage multiplier support gem like GMP and instead use another gem that is not only a Less Multiplier but a More Multiplier, without losing any of the clearing or shot-gunning aspects from having multiple Projectiles.
And because this isn’t gated behind only attacks or only bows, means that spells can also benefit from it.
It has a few specific locations that you can socket it in, and in some places, using the Warrior’s Tale, you can get +4 Projectiles, not just 1 or 2!
Why the Tattoo of the Ramako Makanga is Great:
- Strongest tattoo in the game that frees up bad gems for extra power.
- Can be stacked multiple times and reach silly numbers of projectiles.
- Allows an extreme amount of builds to work better than they ever did, especially non-Deadeye Builds.
How to get the Tattoo of the Ramako Makanga:
- You can get it by winning a match against the Ramako Tribe leader, Ahuana. It’s a pretty rare and extremely expensive tattoo, so very much worth it to farm Ahuana for it.
