TbXie's Splitting Steel Champion Build Guide (PoE Necropolis 3.24)

Update

we reworked the lategame to have spell suppression at the cost of some of the damage there are now 2 lategame options giving a choice depending on availability and prices

Introduction

While Splitting Steel has been a very fun and strong skill throughout its existence, sadly it has fallen prey to clunkiness in the past. With the removal of its hand-in-hand companion which was Call of Steel, the skill now got infinitely less complicated to play & much more fun to play given it has no longer a two-button playstyle requirement. Additionally, the introduction of Returning Projectiles Support has made this skill shine even more because of its potentially shotgunning returning projectiles. This effectively means that the damage on display by this skill is in essence higher than what you would be seeing as many of the projectiles will be hitting a second time while returning.

Because of these changes, we opted to create a well-versed build guide that focuses on durability as well as damage. It has a pretty forgiving entry point and requires almost no gear whilst still providing you with enough potential upgrades to give you a sense of progression.

Build Summary

First and foremost, we can talk about Champion. Champion has been dominant in the meta for the longest of times because it is defensively so extremely potent. Through combining Armor and Evasion, you end up with a character that hardly ever gets hit and when it does, only takes very little damage. As an additional layer of safety, the build tries to leech through all of the incoming damage you are taking. Since, at earlier steps, this can sometimes be a bit hard, we even incorporated Spell Suppression in the earlier steps. Later on, you’ll have an abundance of damage, which results in fewer monsters being able to retaliate & a much higher leech amount which makes it so you’ll leech through all of the things that occasionally do hit you. Besides those, Champion gives you its trademarks Fortify & Stun Avoidance which are not to be underestimated.

The choice of Champion also leads us directly to scaling damage. Because of Champion’s Ascendancy Notes, it becomes very easy to invest in Impale. Since Impale works very well with physical attack skills, going this route was an obvious one. The build caps its impale chance and is, as per usual, on the hunt for modifiers that make your impales last an additional hit. While very strong, sources of this are limited and when itemized pretty expensive. Luckily even without those, you’ll be blasting through the campaign. Besides that, Champion also lends itself very well to scaling both Armour & Evasion. This is particularly useful for our belt choice, the Perseverance. This item alone, when you’re scaling your Evasion & Armour correctly, gives us 25% of our total damage amount. It’s kind of relevant to read what this belt does and understand that you therefore need to balance your Armour and Evasion as closely as possible as you can only get so much and pushing the balance one way will thus lead to losing out damage as the other stat will be lower and thus get less bonus from the belt.

If you’re somewhat comfortable with all fights, you can expect this build to deliver from start to finish. Our test runs, piloted by a strong player, easily killed Pinnacles on the low-end budget. I’m confident that the high-end build will be able to help all of you kill those after some trial & error.

Pros & Cons

Pros

+ Build takes you from start to finish with incremental steps of progression

+ Champion is a very forgiving Ascendancy for newer players

+ Leaguestart viable

+ One of the few attack builds that are actually super solid

+ Both bosses & mapping will be possible

+ Gearing up is relatively new-player friendly

Cons

+ Necessity to balance Armour/Evasion and Life/Accuracy

+ Scales very well from Flasks so important to get good ones asap

+ Does requrie you to play as “melee” on bosses/rares for the best damage output

Playstyle, Mechanics & Strengths

As elaborated in the introduction, the build is incredibly easy to play nowadays. While it no longer depends on any other mechanics, you can, almost always, just click your button and beat monsters. Because you’re a Lifetap Support build, you also don’t ever have to think about mana – until the very latest steps of upgrades free up enough mana for you to revert, but at that point, you will have understood the character well enough that you can deal with this -. Because of its high attack speed, using Leap Slam will be very smooth and you will feel very mobile. Do note, that all of these skills should be free but will require you to get the Elreon mana reduction craft on rings. Be wary of that.

The build makes use of various intricacies that scale Splitting Steel. For example, Sniper's Mark is a huge enabler for skills that promote projectile behaviours, whatever they are. Additionally, as mentioned before, Returning Projectiles Support is a pretty big mechanical win for this skill too as it’ll improve so much about both your single target & clear speed. All in all, it just feels like this build is so well-versed and balanced for all content in the game that it should be a super exciting one to try out.

Passive Skill Tree, PoB, and Gem Links

You can find an optimized Path of Building here. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.

If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, PoePlanner’s website offers you a non-PoB alternative to import the code from the above link. it is highly recommended you install Path of Building to follow builds most optimally.

More information about the Passive Skill Tree, as well as all the Gem Links, can be found on our dedicated page.

Passive Skill Tree, PoB & Gem Links

Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheons

Our Ascendancy, Bandit, and Pantheon Power page goes into detail about all the choices you need to make in these regards.

Pantheons, Bandits & Ascendancy

Gear Summary / TL;DR

A lot of this is explained more in-depth in the Gear Page, however, we will provide you with a basic idea of what gear you’re looking for in this summary.

Gear, Jewels & Flasks

Our recommendation:

Item Slot	Item Name
Head	Obscurantis or a well-rolled rare lategame
Amulet	Replica Dragonfang's Flight
Chest	Lioneye's Vision
Gloves	Rare Gloves with Resistances, Life, Accuracy
Boots	Rare pair of boots with Life, movement speed and attributes
Belt	Perseverance
Rings	Rare Rings with Life, Resistances, Attributes as needed & Crafted – Mana Cost
Weapon	Paradoxica
Weapon 2	Beltimber Blade

Questions & Support

If you enjoy my content to such an extent that you’d like to support me and my work, or you have a specific question you request my private time for, you can buy me a coffee over at Patreon. At no point should you feel pressured to contribute, but if you do, your support means more to me than you will ever imagine.

Even though we try to make our guides as complete as possible, obviously it’s possible you still have questions. We have an entire mod team readily available to support you & your questions on Discord. You can find us on the ARPG Vault Discord. Make sure to open a Guide Help thread so things stay clear in the main channels.

Leveling

Since we are very adamant about trying to give you a leveling experience that lies as close to your endgame playstyle as possible, we will be providing you a way to level up with ###item:Splitting-Steel##. If you are looking for the most optimal way to level a character to maps, we refer you to 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 guide to Path of Exile, which answers many of the questions new players might have and will set you on the right path.

Act I

For starters, create a Duelist in whichever league you want to start.

After killing Hillock, you should be running the following setup

1. Splitting Steel
2. Chance to Bleed Support

With these skills, go complete both Mud Flats & Tidal Island. These zones will give you some rewards and will open up gem choices at vendors. Your gem setup should look like this, going for the rest of Act I.

1. Splitting Steel
2. Chance to Bleed Support
3. Momentum Support

1. Faster Attacks Support (Swap Momentum for Faster attack after Brutus)

1. War Banner

1. Sniper's Mark

1. Ancestral Protector
2. Maim Support

After completing the Ship Graveyard, go to town and pick up your Leap Slam.

Act II

1. Splitting Steel
2. Chance to Bleed Support
3. Vicious Projectiles Support

This frees up your Faster Attacks support, which you can now link to your Leap Slam.

1. Herald of Purity
2. Herald of Ice

1. Blood Rage

Swap Sniper's Mark to Poacher's Mark.

Act III

Add Determination instead of Herald of Ice

Act IV

Get your 4-Link and add in a Returning Projectiles Support to your main link and a Maim Support on your Ancestral Protector.

Further Progression

This setup is what you’re running to maps with. Start following the Early Maps links & gear sections in the Path of Building to progress further.

FAQ

Why dont i have enough mana reservation for all auras in Late game setup

you need Replica Dragonfang's Flight with +3 to splitting steel and anointed with Sovreignity (Silver oil*3) and Enlighten Support Level 3 before respecing to the late game tree