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Blade Blast Bladefall Poison Assassin Build Guide (PoE Ritual 3.13)
INTRODUCTION
Being one of the most prominent choices for both SSF, hardcore as well as trade leagues this build brings very enjoyable clear speed as well as efficient bossing to the table. The generic play-style of the build consists of casting Bladefall and connect that cast with a cast of
Blade Blast which will detonate the blades lingering from the Bladefall causing massive explosions and poisoning the enemies. This allows you to reach full stacks for your
Plague Bearer ability which allows you to literally run through enemies til it depletes.
Since this is a very niche play-style I would strongly recommend watching the video linked below to see if it’s something you’d find enjoyable to play.
Below you can see the build in action from my YouTube Guide. Do note that the video might be outdated in terms of information, and you should always look at this guide to make sure you have the updated version.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ghazzy clocked over 25K hours in PoE, with the main focus of creating helpful content for new players & veterans alike in the form of guides in general for the community. He hosted the Build Creation Panel at ExileCon 2019 and now creates guides here on PoE Vault for your pleasure. You can follow him on Twitch, YouTube or Twitter. You can also join his Discord Community.
GUIDE FORMAT
This build guide is split over multiple pages, both to prevent it from getting too long, as well as to help you better find the information you are looking for.
BUILD OVERVIEW
In this section I will outline the pros, cons, & the general play-style. This will allow you to determine if the build is for you or not!
PROS
+ Speedy Gonzales – The build offers a very effective clear speed where you mostly run through packs of enemies thanks to Plague Bearer.
+ League Starter – The build truly doesn’t require any specific Unique items to function well in the end-game, so it works very well as a league starter build.
+ Bosser – Thanks to being mainly focused on Poison damage, which can stack infinitely, it does very well versus single target boss fights.
+ Unique Play Style – For the best efficiency you are forced to have lingering blades on the ground for the Blade Blast to perform the best. This requires you to cast Bladefall to create such lingering blades, which are then exploded/consumed by the Blade Blast which creates your damage output. This is a similar play-style to the ED/Contagion with a very different visual look & feeling to it.
CONS
– Unique Play Style – Due to the nature of this build’s play-style, it is a build that not everyone will find enjoyable (I strongly recommend watching the gameplay video before starting this build)
– Dodge-Based – The defensive aspect of the build is heavily focused on dodge & evasion, which can make the build feel somewhat squishy, however it works very well in Hardcore despite this. So it comes down to actual player skills in the end.
PLAYSTYLE
For bosses, this build is very straight forward: you cast Bladefall and connect that with
Blade Blast to generate a ton of explosions & poisons on the boss. Depending on your character’s gear/budget, you might have to cast this a few times before the boss dies.
When it comes to clearing maps it’s a bit more advanced:
- You start a map of with killing 1-3 packs using the above-mentioned method. This will bring your
Plague Bearer stacks to a maximum.
- Once this happens, you are supposed to enable Plague Bearer and literally be able to run through enemies and they will die from the Poison damage provided by the Plague.
- Once it has depleted, you’ll have to kill the next 1-3 packs with BF/BB and proceed to use the Plague again. Rinse, repeat, profit.
DAMAGE SCALING AND DEFENSIVE LAYERS
The build focuses entirely on the damage over-time provided by the poison applications you put on enemies, making it very straightforward in terms of scaling the level of your gems as well as damage over time modifiers. Any sort of Physical & Chaos damage that you can bring to the table is always effective for this build.
Defensively the build will land around 5000 Life with Acrobatics combined with Phase Acrobatics. This should be more than enough to safely handle even Hardcore league environments.
CURRENT LEAGUE TIPS & TRICKS
3.13 Ritual League doesn’t offer anything special mechanic that we can abuse with this build.
PoB AND PASSIVE SKILL TREE
The PoB community fork created by Localidentity is the only version being kept up to date, so make sure you have the correct version: PoB Community Fork.
Here is the Blade Blast Bladefall Poison Assassin PoB:, and for a quick glance over the finished skill tree for this version, check out this link.
For high budget the above linked PoB includes the possibility of using a Cluster jewel set-up. I personally didn’t like that approach and kept the “low budget” tree and simply focused on upgrading my gear pieces instead.
You can find more information on our dedicated page.
GEARING
You can read more details about our gearing recommendations on the dedicated page, but for now you can see a summarized version below.
Item Slot | Item Name | Rarity |
Head | Life then res/attributes as needed (For high budget you can get a Hunter influenced modifier “-9% to nearby enemy chaos resistances”) | Rare |
Amulet | Life then Res/Attributes as needed | Rare |
Chest | Life then Res/Attributes as needed | Rare |
Gloves | Life then Res/Attributes as needed | Rare |
Boots | Life then Res/Attributes as needed | Rare |
Belt | ![]() |
Unique/Rare |
Rings | Life then Res/Attributes as needed | Rare |
Weapons | 2x ![]() |
Unique |
ASCENDANCY, BANDIT & PANTHEON RECOMMENDATIONS
You can read about the recommended Ascendancy, Bandit choice, and Pantheon Power recommendations for this build on our dedicated page.
LEVELING
Blade Blast works best when you have lots of lingering blades being spawned by Bladefall, due to this we would prefer to wait with enabling this when leveling until we can use Unleash Support linked to Bladefall. This means we’ll be looking to level with other abilities up to level 38.
BEFORE YOU ENABLE BLADE BLAST
The best way to start of leveling would be to equip yourself with a bow and use Caustic Arrow linked with
Pierce Support ( You can get the Pierce support gem by creating a level 1 Ranger and dump the gem in the the stash after Hillock is dead).
Once you reach level 12 you are able to purchase Toxic Rain which will be the new leveling ability that we’ll be using to level 38, however, instead of shooting this we will be making it in to a mine ability with the following links:
The Aura decision comes in Act 2, which is when we enable Summon Skitterbots as well as
Herald of Agony for optimal damage output.
For more general leveling advice, we recommend the following guides.
- Our step-by-step leveling walkthrough, which allows even more experienced players to save time and speed through the leveling process.
- Our guide to Unique Items for leveling, which helps you gear up your characters for the leveling process.
- Our beginner leveling guide, which answers many of the questions new players might have and will set you on the right path.
QUESTIONS?
To guarantee that my guides are tools you can utilize to enhance your experience in Path of Exile, all you need to do is post your question in the comments and I will personally attend to them as soon as possible.
FINAL NOTES
As much as I love making build guides, it is very crucial in a game like Path of Exile that you play the game the way you enjoy playing it. With that said, if you’ve made any tweaks to the build compared to what I’m showing in this guide I would love if you’d posted it in the comments! It’s an effective way to show other approaches and it helps me grow as a build guide creator!
I hope you found the build guide useful and I wish you all many Exalted Orb drops!