Death's Oath Soulrend Occultist PoB, Leveling & Gems (PoE The Forbidden Sanctum)

Important PoB Notes

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.

End Game PoB & Passive Skill Tree

Here’s the PoB for the build: Path of Building Link

Leveling Guide

This will be an all-encompassing leveling guide, providing 2 different ways to level. 1 way is going the pure caster route which can feel slow or clunky but will allow for you to follow the tree more or less. The other way is going to allow you to push a bit faster and benefits much more from having starting gear. The first leveling guide will be for the pure caster route and will be more in depth and the second one will primarily consist of gems and links through the acts with recommended twink leveling gear.

Pure Caster Leveling Guide:

Twink Gear: Generic caster leveling gear but look to replace lifesprigs with +1 chaos wands asap.

So, for the start we will run Freezing Pulse with Arcane Surge Support ****IMPORTANT: DO NOT LEVEL Arcane Surge Support****. You can pick up the Stormblast Mine for single target if you feel like, but we won’t be using either of these for long.
We can get the Elemental Proliferation Support but doesn’t do us much long term after completing Mercy mission. If running mine for single target, you can link it with Swift Assembly Support if you feel like.

By this point you should be able to buy a or have found a normal wand with ilvl of at least 2. We want a level 2 as it makes the rolling for the mods we want easier. We want to use transmutation and alteration orbs to try to get a +1 to level of all chaos spell skill gems. If you can get 1, that will be good enough, if you can get 2 different wands with this roll, you will be more or less set to just use those through to using Death's Oath.

For Breaking Some Eggs, we will grab Contagion to level (this will be one of our leveling skills for most of the campaign), Frostblink, then buy Orb of Storms and Frost Bomb. How we will progress from this point is put Frost Bomb on pack, Frostblink on mob, drop Orb of Storms, then run away. Most Act 1 mobs will parish to this. Once we enter the Prison, grab/buy Efficacy Support, Void Manipulation Support, and Spell Totem Support (all these can sit in inventory, leveled unlinked, or link Efficacy Support and Void Manipulation Support to Contagion and use that instead of Orb of Storms). After we kill the big ugly in the Prison, get replace Frostblink with Flame Dash and pick up a Wither (level this for now or place in inventory).

Before killing Squid Woman, go back to town, pick up Essence Drain, link with Efficacy Support and Void Manipulation Support. Remove the Frost Bomb, Orb of Storms, Freezing Pulse, and Stormblast Mine. We should be using at this point Essence Drain w/ Efficacy Support & Void Manipulation Support / Contagion by itself / Spell Totem Support with Wither / Flame Dash with level 1 Arcane Surge Support. From the bat, we will have a level 2-3 Essence Drain (which is thanks to the wands we will have crafted earlier), which instead of 31.2 Chaos Damage per sec to 40.6 or 56.4. With having the supports linked, level 1 is looking at 43.7 vs level 1+2 from wands we would have 79. That is about 40.5% or 81% bump in damage.

Complete the quest Sharp and Cruel, grab Controlled Destruction Support and link that to Essence Drain. If you don’t have a 4 link, swap out Efficacy Support (put it with Contagion, we will use it later). Keep the Essence Drain leveling for now.
Rest of the rewards are useless to us. We will kill all bandits for the 2 points as none of them benefit us.

Once we complete Lost in Love we are gonna pick up a few gems. First, get Malevolence, as it is a huge buff to our damage and will be an endgame aura for us. Buy Bane and Despair. We will drop Contagion and Essence Drain. Our new Gem set up will be Bane + Despair + Controlled Destruction Support + Void Manipulation Support. After A Fixture of Fate, grab Swift Affliction Support and swap Void Manipulation Support to another socket to level.

Complete Sever the Right Hand and grab Soulrend. From this point on you will use Bane for clearing then using Soulrend for single target. More than likely will have to gem swap to avoid trying to force two 4 links. If you feel Soulrend single target is too low or you are running out of mana too fast, you can use Essence Drain for bosses or grab a mana flask to use both Bane with Despair and Soulrend. If you can afford it, Bane and Soulrend is my personally preferred way of leveling when going pure caster.

From this point on you are on your own. Realize this is not the fastest leveling character/build. However, if you are just wanting the best way to level while following the various sections of the PoB skill trees, this will make sure you are sorted. If you are ok with dying through the acts and prefer to have more damage, you can forgo taking Vampirism and Infused Flesh (the damage recoup nodes) and travel to Growth and Decay for 25% Damage over Time Multi.

Once you get to level 62 and have the chest piece, you can go ahead and run it as long as you have at least low 70% positive chaos resistance. Make sure to have Soulrend available. You can cast Soulrend and follow it a decent distance, stacking both Death's Oath and Soulrend DoTs to maximize clearing out mobs on your way to maps.

Alternate/Twink Leveling Guide:

Twink Gear: Quill Rain

This approach is straight forward, get a Quill Rain, get Toxic Rain, and go until you get to level 62. This way is in my opinion, the fastest way to get to 62 without having someone else carry you.

If you are going this route, please follow the PoB tree labeled “Toxic Rain Leveling” for skill tree progression. You will need to respec 10 nodes when you swap to Death's Oath, which is more than manageable considering we get that from quest rewards.
You will use Caustic Arrow until Toxic Rain. Once you have Toxic Rain, use Void Manipulation Support, Efficacy Support, and Vicious Projectiles Support for supports when they become available, possibly a Ballista Totem Support if you would like that playstyle and you find a 5L chest piece before Death's Oath. If you want, buy them from your hideout, assuming you are running this as a second character, then get the gems for Death's Oath when they come as quest rewards.

Gem Links

CHEST

Don’t you just hate having to get that ever elusive 6 link chest piece? So do we! Lucky for you, Death's Oath just needs a 6 socket! We will want to make sure that we get 2 red, 2 green, and 2 blue sockets. This means we need to get 4 off colors. When buying a Death’s Oath (if you didn’t get one to drop naturally), you wanna buy one with as many green and blue sockets as you can. Regardless, if you get a chest piece without any off colors, use the 1 socket craft on crafting bench until you get a blue or green. Once completed, do 2 socket craft until you have blue or green. If it rolls red, go back to 1 socket, repeat until 2 off colors. Repeat this process until the first 4 sockets are 2 blue and 2 green. Once you got that sorted, get your 5th and 6th sockets which will likely roll as red. If they don’t just craft back to 4/5 sockets and craft up 1 more and should be good to go.

Lifetap Support – This gives us a duration tag as well as adding damage when we have lifetap up, which will always be up through using shield charge or Molten Shell.
Swift Affliction Support
Void Manipulation Support
Concentrated Effect Support
Efficacy Support
Less Duration Support

GLOVES

Soulrend – Single target skill. Do not use multiple projectiles on this as this will dramatically reduce the damage output of this skill.
Controlled Destruction Support
Void Manipulation Support
Swift Affliction Support

3 LINKS

Defiance Banner
Vaal Blight
Enfeeble

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Malevolence
Determination
Enlighten Support (Level 3 is fine, though PoB shows level 4)

4 LINKS

Lifetap Support – This will activate the extra damage to Death Aura, keep level 1 as it is linked to skills that do not need to get the damage bonus.
Vaal Molten Shell
Shield Charge
Increased Duration Support – We are using increased duration for the Molten Shell, however, if you prefer to zoom zoom faster, replace this with a Faster Attacks Support for Shield Charge.

&

Blasphemy Support – This combined with Despair will be used to proc Profane Bloom, giving us all the juicy pops, which is the only reason we play this build for anyways.
Despair
Petrified Blood – We take this as it provides almost 66% increased max hit across the board and 33.3% increased effective hit pool.