PoEVault's Corrupting Fever Champion (PoE Trial of the Ancestors 3.22)

August 28th, 2023, 15:54

Introduction

In recent years Corrupting Fever has been a steady choice among mapping focused players for Leaguestart. It’s fast, relatively sturdy and not too difficult to get going. As a bonus, it can be scaled into a true late-game monster if you are willing to invest, through a transition over to Gladiator.
In many ways, it has a play style similar to that of bleedbow, where you rapidly spread a high damage DoT onto every enemy you meet and watch them explode.

We’re not a Gladiator I hear you say, how do we achieve explosions without explode chest, forbidden Flame and Flesh jewels or a specific cluster notable? Haemophilia gloves is your answer. These babies will functionally do the same for us.
As Spellslinger has been horribly nerfed over the years, we rely on The Poet's Pen to alleviate that issue for us. This can be a bit expensive on Leaguestart, but the build does not need the wand until it is ready to move into red maps. That said we want to get this as early as possible.

Build Assesment

Pros

Excellent clear speed and movement speed
Very good League starter
Fairly straightforward gear progression
Long-range playstyle provides innate safety

Cons

Relies heavily on a few select Uniques. Some of these can be expensive early on.
Namesake skill can not be played from the start and needs to be transitioned into
Can feel a little clunky to level until midway through the campaign

Playstyle and Build mechanics

Corrupting Fever itself is just a Damage Over Time effect that is applied by other things. This means we need a delivery system, in order to get our DoT going on targets. This is where Kinetic Blast comes in. It fires projectiles that explode on impact. Once we combine this with Greater Multiple Projectiles Support, we have multiple projectiles fired in rapid succession that all explode on impact. Thus we very rapidly stack our DoT on targets and watch them explode through the use of Haemophilia.
This takes care of our clear needs, and it does decent damage to single targets. But our single target damage would still be lacking if this was all we had going for us.
Through Spellslinger early on, and later on through The Poet's Pen, we have Exsanguinate and Reap Reap going off automatically when we attack with Kinetic Blast.
Some of you may have noticed that Corrupting Fever only has a duration of 7 seconds. Pressing this every 7 seconds to refresh the buff would be incredibly annoying. Thankfully, Corrupting Fever is refreshed when we pay a certain ammount of life. Thus we can keep it active by simply attacking targets with Kinetic Blast linked to Lifetap Support.

This means at the end of the day, that we are a one-button build while mapping. Exluding movementskill, ofc. Many people, myself included, value this highly.

Defensive Layers and Damage Scaling

This build utilises a combination of the core defenses in the form of Armour, Evasion and Spellblock. We combine this with high chaos resistance, a Glorious Vanity in the name of Xibaqua and decently high regeneration. Overall this package keeps us quite safe.

The damage is scaled entirely through Damage Over Time Multipliers, Damage Over Time and Physical Damage modifiers. We spread DoTs around, and things die. Very straight forward.

Passive Skill Tree

All our guides use Path of Building.
We have a simple guide for you that shows how to import the build into Path of Building, you can find the guide here(Path of Building Guide)”:https://www.poe-vault.com/guides/path-of-building

Path of Building

You can find the PoB here: https://pobb.in/wUDG-MQ_PCW1

For leveling the build, there are two PoB’s separated for user simplicity
League starting the build from scratch without The Poets Pen : https://pobb.in/0PthmfKCAcaY
Leveling the build with The Poets Pen: https://pobb.in/OcK3D1yDTuGy
Included in the Path of Building are skill trees and all gem links. For simplicity’s sake, Elemental Resistances are not included on gear, and you can fill them in as you like depending on available gear.

Ascendancy, Bandits and Pantheon

PoEVault's Corrupting Fever Champion Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheon Powers (Trial of the Ancestors)

Major

Soul of the Brine King Immunity to Freeze and mitigates chill.
Soul of Abberath Provides immunity to burning ground and mitigates Ignite

Gear Summary/ TL;DR

Item Slot	Item Name
Head	Rare Pig-Faced Bascinet
Amulet	Rare Onyx Amulet	Unique
Chest	Skin of the Lords OR Rare Astral Plate	Rare/Unique
Gloves	Haemophilia
Boots	Rare Dragonscale Boots
Belt	Doryani's Invitation OR Rare Rustic Sash
Rings	Rare Amethyst Ring AND Two-Stone Ring
Weapon	The Poet's Pen
Shield	Saffell's Frame

Leveling

Unfortunately we cannot directly level our Champion with the skills the build is intended to play with. Most of them become available fairly early, but we sadly cannot access them until we are past Library as Gladiator does not get to have acces to all of these spesific toys. As a result, we level with physical damage skills until we can make the swap. Our choice here is, as will surprise nobody, Spectral Helix.