Whenever an Ancestral Warchief build is brought up, it’s usually a Chieftain, and for good reasons. However, Path of Exile Zeerohh’s Ancestral Warchief Champion is an exception to the rule, and it can be as good as the default Chieftain choice. Get your POE Currency ready because this is a PoE build that’s worth using them on.
Why Choose the Ancestral Warchief Champion?
There is a couple of things that make the Ancestral Warchief Champion viable and worth trying: affordability, tankiness, and uniqueness of gameplay. This PoE build is meant to get you started on the league, considering its price and survivability.
As for the tankiness, it is become possible because of the following:
- Scaling Armor – This gives you 70% damage reduction.
- Permanent Fortify – This means a constant 20% less damage taken. You can get this early on, which means you wouldn’t have trouble even right from the start.
- Basalt Flask – Gives even further damage reduction
- Totem Build – With this being a totem build, there will be many instances where the totem will be targeted instead of you.
- Flesh and Stone – Aside from the damage reduction, you’ll also blind your enemies with this, which in turn means chances that they will miss and you not receiving damage.
Now let’s go to the pros and cons. Aside from tankiness and it being a cheap starter, it also deals a ton of boss damage. It’s also a great PoE build to use in the Labyrinth.
As for the cons, it’s a melee build, which means a bit slower clear speed on maps since you don’t have much AOE. It’s also a totem build, which isn’t a lot of players’ cup of tea. Also, while the Path of Exile build is cheap to start, it can get pretty pricey when you’re finally taking the PoE build to its endgame gear progression. Lastly, which can be a concern to some people with very particular tastes, it’s not a very aesthetically pleasing character.
Having said all that, these cons, despite how long, are outweighed by the pros. After all, a good Path of Exile build isn’t sold by words but action.
Gearing Up and Socketing Gems
Now let’s go to the skill gems and gear. These are the bests in slot, so you need to do some PoE trade for these PoE items, especially the PoE uniques.
For the core skill, Ancestral Warchief, have it with Melee Physical Damage, Concentrated Effect, Brutality, Impale, and Multiple Totems support gems. To further boost your gems, have this setup in Atziri’s Disfavour, a two-handed axe that increases the level of socketed gems by 2. It also gives a huge increase to physical damage, attack speed, chance to cause bleeding on hit, and weapon range.
For your helm, the Deidbellow is the best in slot, as it gives bonuses to strength, dexterity, melee and physical damage, armor, and increased attack, cast, and movement speed for you and your allies after using a Warcry recently.
As for the body, a Rare armor with at least +100 increase in life and elemental resistances is a must. This is where you’ll be socketing many of your utilities: Pride, Dread Banner, and Blood and Sand and Flesh and Stone with Maim and Enlighten support gems.
Tombfist would be your best choice for gloves. Socket in a Murderous Eye Jewel, as it will give your attacks a 4-second Intimidate on enemies, as well as Berserk and Enduring Cry. Meanwhile, the belt should be a Delve fossil-crafted Stygian Vise with increased life, global physical damage, and elemental resistances.
For Boots, go with a Rare one with increased elemental resistances, life, and 20-35% resistances.
Last would be accessories. The rings could either be two Rares with life, elemental resistances, physical damage, and attack speed, or one of those Rares with the same bonuses with a Dream Fragments ring to further mitigate freeze and chill, but this means your DPS will take a dip.
Crystalware: Jewels and Flasks
After that, we move on to jewels, which should be the following:
- Thread of Hope (Unique) to let you allocate passives not connected to your tree
- Lethal Pride (Unique)
- Watcher’s Eye with “Impales you inflict last additional 2 hits while using Pride
- Murderous and Searching Eye Jewel for bonus dexterity and intelligence, physical damage, life, and attack speed
- Rare Crimson Jewel for increased totem and melee damage, life, and attack and cast speed
For the Flasks, they should be the following:
- Divine Life Flask of Staunching for life recovery and bleeding removal and immunity
- Lion’s Roar for +3000 armor and additional knockback to melee attacks during flask effect
- Avenger’s Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline for increased movement speed
- Flagellant Basalt Flask of Warding for damage reduction and reflection, as well as curse removal and immunity
So there you have it, Zeerohh’s Ancestral Warchief Champion! Simple, different, and effective. It’s undoubtedly a great choice for those just starting the league as well as those that want to try something new—especially a melee class. Give it a try; you definitely won’t regret it!