10 – Tabula Rasa
One of the most iconic unique items, though extremely common, is the famous Tabula Rasa. Giving you from level 1 and beyond an easy, flexible 6 Links to play with, at the cost of no defences, makes it a bog-standard item for twinking your levelling process and speeding it up!
People use it even in early mapping, which can take a long way since Links tend to be the best way to get damage. Considering how cheap a Tabula is, even during League Start, it’s among the game’s best uniques.
Why Tabula Rasa is Great:
- Easy 6-Linking, with white sockets, so anything can be slotted in without spending a lot of currency on Chromatic Orbs.
- Can always vendor for a Divine Orb.
- Easy to get good Corruptions.
- One of the most coveted items during League Start
How to Get a Tabula Rasa:
- There are several ways to get one. One of the most usable is farming Aqueduct-tileset maps and zones, like the Bloody Aqueducts in Act 9, for a set of Humility cards.
- There’s also the Vanity Divination Card, which grants you a Corrupted Tabula.
- It’s one of the most common uniques, and since it has a really low item level requirement, it can drop right in Twilight Strand.
Tabula Rasa full details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Tabula_Rasa
9 – The Iron Fortress
This beauty of an armour is the core piece in any Strength Stacking attacking build in the game. Not only does it provide you with enough Block Chance to hit Block cap (1% Block Chance per 50 Strength, and when you have over 2000, which is an average low number for strength stackers, this translates into 50% base attack block) but also has the unique line that makes your Strength give you 150% of its bonus to Melee Physical Damage per 10 Strength (base is 2%, with it becomes 3%).
Though 3% may not seem huge, again, when you stack enough Strength, those 3% per 10 suddenly become 600% increased Melee Physical Dmg. But that doesn’t stop. With clever mechanics, like Battlemage’s Cry at maximum power, Iron Will, or Crown of Eyes, means that those 600% increased Melee Phys, which is very restrictive, turn into 150% of its own effect but also become generic Attack damage. So now, if you have 2000 Strength, this body armour gives you over 900% Increased Attack Damage. Even Bow attacks!
What Makes The Iron Fortress Great:
- Best Armour for Strength Stacking
- Grants both defensive and offensive stats based on Strength.
- High armour values, great for burly, tanky characters.
- Build defining.
How to get The Iron Fortress:
- It’s not drop restricted, so it can drop anywhere in the game and also be chanced, Gwennen gambled, or gotten from Divination Cards.
- It has no form of deterministic farming from direct Divination Cards.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Iron_Fortress
8 – Lightning Coil
Once upon a time, the most coveted body armour, besides Shavronne’s Wrappings, fell from grace and was replaced due to huge power creep and other better mitigation sources introduced into the game.
That changed somewhat during patch 3.19, when GGG rebalanced dozens of uniques, and this one was one of them. It went from 30% Phys Damage from hits taken as Lightning Damage to 50%. While this might not look like it’s enough to warrant being on this list, you must remember that once you reach 100%, you don’t need ANY armour.
So for an evasion-based character who has Capped Spell Suppress and lots of Resistance, especially a Pathfinder who can chug all 3 Elemental Flasks and abuse the 20% Less Element (based on the flask) Damage, sometimes doubling that with over 100% Flask Effect, means that you’re suddenly near immortal to most types of damage.
What makes Lightning Coil Great:
- Cheap and easy to get.
- One of the tankiest choices for Evasion-based characters.
- Can open up more offensive passives due to covering so much defence in a single slot
How to get Lightning Coil:
- It isn’t drop-restricted, so it can drop anywhere, even from Gwennen.
- There’s only one card that targets Lightning Coil, The Coming Storm. It drops in several lightning-themed maps, like Wharf or Promenade. It’s a set of 8 cards.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Lightning_Coil
7 – Doryani’s Prototype
This has got to be one of the most intricate and complicated body armours ever invented in Path of Exile. It combines several mechanics that had been used before but takes a wholly different spin to it and brings forth an entirely unique build to fit this build-defining body armour.
Like I mentioned in my Unique Jewel’s list, this body armour combos nicely with Melding of the Flesh, Thread of Hope, and Tempered by War in order to both dodge the drawbacks of those items but also make use of them by improving this item, as they reduce up to 100% Lightning Resistance, and combined with the regular -60% All Res from Kitava’s Curse, this puts you at a baseline of -160% Lightning Res.
So all enemies around you now have that Resistance, and you’ll be destroying them because negative Resistance is a multiplier to your damage. You have to mitigate any Lightning damage you take through Armour and other means, like Tempered by War and Divine Flesh, to make you near unkillable!
What makes Doryani’s Prototype Great:
- Build defining.
- It can make you reach insane levels of damage.
- So strong GGG had to hotfix the minimum Resistance you could get.
How to get Doryani’s Prototype:
- It can drop anywhere, without any restriction. However, it is tagged as a League-Specific Item, so it can also be gotten from specific cards.
- There is no deterministic way of getting one, through Divination Cards.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Doryani%27s_Prototype
6 – Replica Farrul’s Fur
This is a fun item whose regular counterpoint saw lots of use for all skills, for ease of Power and Frenzy Charge generation. The Replica, however, is a beast all unto itself and can be used not only for all the Flicker Enjoyers but also for Slayer Spell Casters that want to stack all 3 Charges all at the same time by making use of Badge of the Brotherhood and stacking all the Power Charges Possible.
It’s a massively strong armour because of its sheer flexibility and the several ways it can be used and abused.
The best way to make this body armour effective is by having your Aspect of the Cat supported by a Less Duration support, so you refresh your Charges quicker and spend less time during Cat’s Stealth. This means you also spend more time having Onslaught than not, though it’s not super reliable.
What Makes Replica Farrul’s Fur Great:
- Build Enabling
- High flexibility in use
- High Armour, evasion, life, utility, and can give you infinite Charge Sustain.
How to get Replica Farrul’s Fur:
- As it’s a Curio Display Heist Unique, it cannot be chanced or dropped anywhere.
- There is a single card that can grant Replica Items, but there are over a hundred of them, and the card only drops in an insanely hard-to-get map. And it’s weighted, so the only way of target farming for this is by playing a lot of Heist and running Replica Blueprints.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Replica_Farrul%27s_Fur
5 – Brass Dome
One of the best defensive body armours in the game, and one of the go-to choices for all Juggernauts, in particular Righteous Fire Juggs, because of how much it provides. The only drawback it has is that the “Strength provides no bonus to maximum life” is an absurdly low price to pay to use this monster.
As a Juggernaut, the better your body armour is, the more Armour you get overall, as you double the amount you get, while also meaning that 8% of your Armour affects the elemental damage you take. The higher the Armour, the lower the damage.
But not only that, the Brass Dome also provides a whopping 5% to all elemental maximum resists, making it synergize perfectly with Juggernaut’s Unbreakable. And to top it off, it also makes you immune to critical strikes. So no more spikes of damage. It’s truly a marvel of a body armour.
What makes Brass Dome Great:
- Grants up to 5% to All Maximum Elemental Resistance.
- Over 4000 armour in a single slot when well rolled.
- Makes you immune to Critical Strikes.
How to get The Brass Dome:
- It can drop anywhere and be chanced or Gwennen.
- It has no specific cards attached, so deterministically farming it is nearly impossible.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Brass_Dome
4 – Shroud of the Lightless/Replica
I’m combining the Replica and the non-Replica variants here because they’re both uniquely good and quite similar. Replica Shroud is simple but effective. Instead of Gem Sockets, you have 6 Abyssal Sockets. That’s it. Its power comes from supremely well-rolled Abyss Jewels, and that’s also true for the Regular version, which can only have up to 3 Abyss Sockets. They synergize exceptionally well with other abyss items and thus deserve to be mentioned.
In addition to its 2-3 Abyss Sockets, the Regular Shroud also grants 4% Elemental Penetration (all 3 elements), 1% Max Life and Max Mana per Abyss Jewels affecting you. This counts for all jewels in your gear and the passive tree. And if you have Lightpoacher equipped, those 3 (or 6 if you go for a Replica Shroud) also grant you 5% of Phys Damage As Extra of all 3 Elements. Which synergizes supremely well with the regular’s Ele Pen!
What Makes Shroud of the Lightless and its Replica Great:
- High Flexibility
- Insane amounts of power and/or defence depending on your jewels
- Build Defining
How to Get Shroud of the Lightless and its Replica:
- The Replica, just like Replica Farrul’s Fur, can only be found in Experimented and Replica Blueprints, in Heist, besides the Forward Gaze card.
- The regular one cannot be chanced and can only drop by killing Abyss Liches, Amanamu or Ulaman in the Abyssal Depths.
- It also has a card, Mysery in Darkness, that can give you a Shroud, and it drops from Kurgal, a Delve Boss. Not exactly farmable.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Shroud_of_the_Lightless_(3_Abyssal_Sockets) https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Replica_Shroud_of_the_Lightless
3 – Ivory Tower
This odd little body armour is one of the strongest tools players have at their disposal to circumvent the need to wear a Shav’s to deal with Chaos Damage as a Low-Life build. And not only that, but they thrive, and reach higher levels of ES that were previously unheard of as a single player, like 45000 Energy Shield or more with it.
It’s quite the intricate body armour because you want to scale Life, Energy Shield and Mana simultaneously, but it also shoe-horns you into using spells, so you can abuse the fact you want to be Low Life by using Pain Attunement.
What Makes Ivory Tower Great:
- Enables you to play Low Life without Petrified Blood or using a Shavronne’s Wrappings.
- Highest source of flat Energy Shield in the game if adequately scaled.
- Perfect for MoM ES stackers.
How to Get Ivory Tower:
- Like Brass Dome, it can drop anywhere but does not have any cards associated with it.
- Can be chanced and gambled from Gwennen.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Ivory_Tower
2 – The Fourth Vow
This absolute monster of a body armour was introduced in this league (3.21), and it blew people’s minds over how overtuned it is for defence, when combined with certain existing items and mechanics, like Divine Flesh, Juggernaut’s Unbreakable, Petrified Blood, Recoup and Eldritch Battery.
It makes it so with Divine Flesh and/or Juggernaut’s Unbreakable, Armor suddenly affects all elemental damage, and that’s after being cut in half by Divine Flesh. Armour is stronger the smaller the hit you take, so splitting and spreading all damage you take into smaller parts reduces the overall amount of damage you take.
The math is very convoluted and hard to explain without a spreadsheet or Path of Building, but this body armour is the most broken defensive piece they’ve added since Mageblood. And what’s best… you can use both.
What Makes The Fourth Vow Great:
- Single-handedly the best source of damage mitigation in a body armor.
- Build defining.
- Borderline OP and will be nerfed. It covers all types of damage with a single stroke.
- The lack of life is not an issue with the new 15% increased Life Mastery.
How to Get The Fourth Vow:
- As a new item, it has no cards designated to it.
- It can drop anywhere and be chanced or Gwennen.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Fourth_Vow
1 – Stasis Prison
This fabled item is so rare that in my over 10.000 hours playing this game, I’ve yet to see one in person, much less play with it. When it was introduced, it took players over 2 weeks to figure out where it dropped and how rare it was, reaching over 200 Exalteds at the time.
This Armour gives you up to 100% of Damage Taken Recouped as Life, immunity to Debuffs (if you get a perfectly rolled one), and up to 100 Max life, which isn’t amazing but not worthless.
Combining the Stasis Prison with an Alt-Quality Petrified Blood, which is being buffed by an Ashes, and then using the Recovery Mastery for Recoup Effects last only 3 seconds, means you recover 33% of your life per second. You ignore 52% of the damage you take because you are recovering a lot more per second than you take, especially if you scale your Life Recovery Rate, effectively making you immortal to Hits.
What makes Stasis Prison Great:
- Immunity to Debuffs if well rolled.
- Insane life recovery and near immortality.
- Build Defining and possibly Enabling.
How to get Stasis Prison:
- As mentioned before, it took weeks for players to figure out where it dropped. It comes from the most challenging content currently in the game, the Unrelenting Domain of Timeless Conflict, vulgarly known as Uber 5-ways.
- It has no cards and can’t be chanced or acquired by any other means.
For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Stasis_Prison
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