Upgrade Checklist

October 18th, 2024, 17:34

The Checklist

These are the things most commonly missed when people struggle for that last bit of power to run maps easily. If you are lost on what to upgrade next, make sure you have these covered first.

Flasks

You should always be upgrading flasks, even during the campaign, but they become super important in endgame. They will form a large part of your defensive layering against stuns, curses, ailments, and just damage in general.

Flask Prefixes

Prefixes deal with the strength, duration, and charge generation of your flasks. Long story short, get charge generation on utility flasks and life recovery on life flasks.

Utility Flasks

I always use this because it gives charges in mapping and bossing situations.

Charge recovery is ok during maps but you get nothing during bosses.

I don’t recommend the “gain charge when you crit” mod because it has an internal cooldown and you can only get one charge for one flask per cooldown.

Life Flasks

I usually run one of these mods on my Life flask, but it can be a preference thing. Many people like the instant or half-instant healing mod as well

Flask Suffixes

Suffixes affect your character, sometimes giving damage but usually more focused on defense against various ailments. Without good suffixes you will find yourself dying to Shock or Stuns.

If you don’t have any chance to avoid ailments, utility flasks can give full protection with the tradeoff that their duration is lower. If you have some already there are also mods with no downside and that can help you hit 100% immunity.

Utility Flasks

I always run 3-4 utility flasks and focus on covering shock, freeze, and stuns first. Freeze can be changed when you get the pantheon.

Life Flasks

My life flask always has the bleeding mod, if you already have bleed and corrupted blood immunity there are a few other useful options as well.

Automation of Flasks

As powerful as flasks are, keeping them running is a hassle. Enchants can fix much of that issue.

Instilling Orb: With 5 of these a flask can be enchanted at the crafting bench, allowing automation in several different ways. They are quite rare, so don’t use them to try and roll the enchant yourself just collect the 5 and guarantee it.

If you enchant the flasks to either side of the one you press, all 3 will activate with one button.

This is great on DPS flasks, I never press manually just let it do its thing.

If you don’t care about using flasks strategically at all, this enchant is awesome.

Pantheons

Pantheons become available in Act 6 and continue to unlock as you kill bosses until the end of the campaign. There are 4 major and 8 minor, you can have one of each active.

Each of them grants 1 buff to your character and can be upgraded with Divine Vessel to grant additional buffs. Find out which soul you need and search for it on the atlas, then place the vessel in your map device when opening that map. Kill the boss and use the filled vessel.

Pantheons can be changed while in your hideout at no cost, but must be powered up seperately. They are defensive in nature and can be swapped around based on the content you are running.

Anoint

Anointing is accessed through Cassia and the Blight mechanic, it gives access to one Notable from the tree without pathing to it. Only amulets and some blight-themed uniques can be anointed, so you will usually only have one.

Holding ALT and hovering over a notable will show the combination of blight Oils required, just bring those to Cassia and she will add it to your amulet with no additional cost.

Gem Levels/Quality

A very easy thing to fix, and often overlooked, are the skill gems themselves. This is especially important for casters because their damage is heavily dependent on gem level, unlike melee.

For a visual example, this compares Storm Brand with midrange gear only changing gems.

There are two ways to add quality to a gem, the first is using 20 Gemcutter's Prism, it’s the most straightforward method but it will take a long time to get all the gems you need finished. You can also trade a level 20 gem and one gemcutter to any vendor for a level 1 gem with 20% quality.

Level 6 copies of your main skill in weapon swap slots.
Save all Gemcutter's Prism at first.
If using a spell, buy a level 21 corrupted gem with no quality ASAP. Upgrade later to 21/20
When supports hit 20 trade them to the vendor with gemcutters for quality versions and relevel.
Always check the quality bonus in PoB to see if it’s worthwhile.
Check all gems, not just main skill.

Catalysts

Catalysts are another mechanic that interacts with affix tags, they allow you to increase the value of all mods on that item with a specific tag by 20%. For example, if your ring had 40% fire resistance then Prismatic Catalysts would increase it to 48%.

Only belts, rings, and amulets can have catalysts applied. They work the same as other quality currency, applying 5% to Normal items, 2% to Magic, and 1% to Rare/Unique.

Catalysts can be expensive, especially if you need the full 20 for rares and uniques. In some cases they can add a lot of damage though, or give you that little bit of resistance to not need an entirely new piece of gear. In cases like that the cost is worthwhile.

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