GhazzyTV's Dominating Blow Gear Progression (PoE Settlers of Kalguur)

Introduction

While the PoB shows you what gear we believe belongs in which budget, it might still be a bit unclear in what order we think you should prioritise what.
On this page, we will do our best to explain what we prioritise when, and why. With that out of the way, let’s dig into the gear progression.

Campaign

During the campaign with this build, you will for the most part pick up items that have the links and colours you desire and hit them with an Orb of Alchemy or an Essence with an appropriate function to make them rare. You will be hoping for a resistance when doing this, and should you end up having an open suffix on the item the crafting bench will let you add on a second resistance roll or an attribute roll, depending on your current needs.
Keeping your resistances as high as possible, ensuring you have the attribute rolls and getting some life modifiers is all you need to worry about at this stage.
Remember that you are going to wand a Claw during campaign if you are levelling as Dominating Blow, preferably of a variant that has a life/mana on hit implicit.

Low Budget

We are going to make the assumption that you have kept your resistances capped going into this budget, and will be working with that assumption. If you do not have capped resistances when hitting maps, you need to get that sorted as soon as possible.

Early gear

The first order of operations is going to be acquiring a Sixlink. The base does not really matter as most any base with the correct colours will beat Tabula, but a high armour base is preferable. An Armour/ES base would make the sockets easier, and is very much acceptable. Take what you can get!
Now that we have our Chestpiece sorted, we are going to be looking for a decent claw. Thankfully making one ourselves is really easy!
Grab a Gemini Claw as your base, preferably of itemlevel 77, and some Screaming Essence of Fear. We now hit the claw with the essences until we get a decent roll of #% minion damage, and an open suffix modifier. We craft the skill trigger into this open suffix and we are done! If we got a little bit lucky we hit attack speed, if we did not it does not matter too much as we will be making a new claw later.
If you want to guarantee the attack speed roll, it is highly advised you purchase a base with fractured attack speed of a high tier (preferably 20%+) as this simplifies the crafting process dramatically!

We now grab some boots, rings, helmet, chestpiece and rare belt with life and resistances on them, preferably with an attribute roll or two and we go demolish some maps.
Ideally one of our rings is a Bone Ring to help with minion survivability, but this is not hugely important early on.
The amulet usually serves as a pure attribute bank in the low budget. This items sole purpose will be to cover attribute requirements and maybe give us a life roll.

As soon as at all possible, we are going to want a Vaal Domination. Getting access to the big boy sentinels is the best portion of the build, and I cannot stress enough how much of a fun factor they are, on top of them being incredibly powerful.

Cluster

Like all minion builds we are going to want a cluster jewel to help us along as we are lacking points on the passive skill tree. Any random base will work for this, 8-12 passives are all fine. You hit this with an alchemy and take what you get, it doesn’t have to do anything fancy.

Darkness Enthroned and Ghastly Eye jewels

We’re now looking to add some punch into the build as we’re starting to take jewel sockets, and this belt gives us two and increases their effect.
For the belt itself, we are looking for a decent roll, but not a super high one as they are expensive. 75% is a good point to aim for, as it strikes a good balance between cost and effect.

For the jewels themselves, the most important modifier is “minions have increased attack speed” as this increases not only their ability to hit fast, but our ability to dish out hits and thus our ability to spawn them in the first place. # to# additional physical damage and #% increased damage if you have used a minion skill recently are both excellent additions here, but they tend to make the jewels more expensive and is not super important early on. Get them if you can, but focus on getting attack speed ghastly eye jewels with life.

Shield

We will be brandishing a shield to beef up our defenses, and we prefer basetypes that gives us armour.
Early on it’s not too important what is on this shield, but life, resistances, chaos resistance, additional chance to block and such are always very welcome additions.
Ideally we want what is known as a “shaper recover shield”, which is a shield with the modifier “recover #% of life when you block”. These are either purchased for relatively cheap, or made yourself by following the guide linked below. Regardles of which method you choose, try to get a shield with as high armour as you can for these early stages, but don’t spend a boatload of currency here.

Concluding low budget

If you have not already, it is high time that you sort your flasks. Get flasks with the modifiers that correspond with the guide as best you can, and be willing to spend a little extra to get better rolls on your Rumi’s Concoction Rumi’s Concoction

Medium Budget

Claw

At this point it is high time to take a look at our claw. If you did not make the attack speed claw earlier, you have one of two options now.
Option 1, is making that fractured base claw with a higher tier of essence, Deafening, to hit a higher roll.
Option 2, is to make the slightly more involved claw explained below. This is not very expensive and will drastically improve the user experience while playing this build.

Buy a T1 atk speed fractured Gemini claw of proper ilvl – minimum 77
Fear essence till the essence hits max roll (if you want perfect) – Ideally Deafening
Open suffix if needed
Block all prefixes by exalting the shit (bench block suf if needed to safeguard 1 open suf)
Bench pref can’t be changed
Veiled chaos
Bench-block any of the “dmg over time mods” such as chaos, cold, fire or phys.
Unveil & pray for atk/cast speed for minions
Rinse repeat till you hit, any time you fill suffixes you anul and if it bricks you repeat the entire process
Finish with trigger craft (if no room => anul and pray, if brick repeat entire process)
The third prefix can literally be anything it does not matter. Only stats that matters are atk speed, minion atk/cast speed, and fear essence min dmg

Block Jewel

At this point we will want to better our block and enable endurance charges.
The first step of which is going to be a 3 point small cluster jewel, of the baseype “chance to block attack damage” with the notable “Rote Reinforcement”. While this does not entirely cap our block, it gives us 4 endurance charges and this is a very powerful source of damage mitigation.

Quickening Covenant

As we really like attack speed, one of the first worthwhile purchases we will make in the medium budget is going to be the Quickening Covenant. The massive attack speed this grants will make summoning our sentinels better, it will make their clear better and it will improve single target equally. Allround amazing jewel.

Large Cluster Improvement

We have outgrown our previous large cluster, and will be looking to upgrade. Ideally we want a “35-3” cluster. This is a popular term for a cluster with “35% increased effect” and “minions have 3% increased attack and cast speed”. These jewels tend to be really expensive on trade, but luckily there is a few tricks we can employ. I will attempt to outline the easiest avenue for creating a good, cheap, jewel:
Step 1: Purchase a cluster jewel of the “minions deal 10% increased damage” variety. We need this jewel to have itemlevel 84, and to skimp on the budget we are getting an 11 point jewel. 11 point jewel
Step 2: Go to the Horticrafting bench (Harvest bench if you will) and click the “reforge a rare item with random modifiers, including a Caster modifier” for blue essence or “reforge a rare item with random modifiers, including a Speed modifier” for yellow essence.
Step 3: Repeat until you hit “35% increased effect “ and “Minions have 3% increased attack and cast speed” together.
It’s important that you hit 3% and not 2% as 2×.1.35 = 2.7 which is rounded down to 2, while 3×1.35 = 4.05 which is rounded up 4.
The 3% roll is therefore actually 2% better per point than the 2% roll!

Improving Ghastly eye jewels

If you still have the original attack speed + life ghastly jewels from before, it is time to look for upgrades now.
Fourmoded jewels are likely out of reach, so look for threemoded jewels instead.
Life and Attack Speed are both still king, try to get a high “minions deal # to # additional physical damage” or “minions deal #% increased damage if you have used a minion skill recently” if you can. Getting both is likely too expensive, but they are both perfectly fine and should be purchased now.

Shield

Our previous recovery shield is likely starting to fall behind a little bit now, and we would like higher armour and higher recovery on block. The best, and easiest, solution to this is The Surrender. This shield packs a massive punch, especially if you can get a high (400+) recovery modifier.

Helmet

As levels scale minion builds, we are going to want as many + to level modifiers as we can. Helmets are now an excellent source of this stat.
All you want this item to have, is +2 to level of all minion skills gems combined with a decent life roll. If you can get resistances or attributes you are going to want them, but you don’t strictly need them.

Spectre boots

To get access to our third specter, we are going to need to raise the level of our raise spectre gem to level 25. The easiest way to do this, is +2 spectre boots. This is an elder influenced mod, which means it can only exist on items with elder influence. You can attempt to purchase these on the market, if they exist, or you can buy a pair of boots with elder influence and roll them yourself. The only important modifiers here are +2 specter levels and movement speed. Maximum life is welcome, as are resistances or attributes.

Unset ring and Enlighten

We are going to want an Enlighten Support of level 3 and an Unset Ring to fit all of our gems. The unset ring does not need anything fancy, it needs life, an open prefix for “non-channeling skills have -7 to mana cost craft” and whatever amount of resistances and/or Attributes you can get.

+1 to all amulet

As previously mentioned, minion skills really enjoy levels. As such we cram yet another modifier into our amulet, +1 to all skill gems. The amulet mostly has the same job as before, high attribute rolls and life, except it now also needs to carry a +1 to all skillgems modifier.

Claw Improvement

If you did not make the more involved claw earlier, it is high time you do so now.
If you did, skip this step.

This will conclude the medium budget progression.

High Budget

Highly Specialised Dominating Blow Gem

We previously picked up a Vaal Dominating Blow. This sadly came at the cost of the Phantasmal variant of the gem, which would give us more Sentinels and drastically increase both our mapping efficiency and boss damage. We are now going to be aiming to rectify that.
This process is a little expensive, but thankfully it is not complicated. We buy a phantasmal variant of Dominating Blow. We give it 20% quality and we go do Alva temples for gem corrupt room. Double corrupting the phantasmal jewel and hoping it becomes vaal.
If you really want to take this far, you repeat the process until you end up with a 21/20 vaal phantasmal domination. This is overkill for most players.
You should always check the market for this gem and see if it exists, as it is likely cheaper to purchase than it is to make.

Ashes of the Stars

This amulet does quite a lot for us. The +1 to all skills modifier is huge, as can be expected. The quality modifier, which we absolutely should have maxed out at 30%, will in combination with the alternate quality Phantasmal for our Vaal Domination, give us +3 sentinels!
The reservation efficiency modifier is a bit more fluent. If we take a 10% roll, we will need to double elevate our Exceptional Eldritch Implicit of 10% to 12%. This is a lot of hassle. so getting at least 12% on ashes is a good idea. If you get a higher roll than 12, you can go down one tier of eldritch currency for the helmet.
You will simply have to make a decision here based on the market and its current prices, but serious consideration should be given to trying to get a higher roll here.

Helmet Implicits

It’s high time we spice up our helmet a bit. As we touched on before, reservation really matters here. Ideally, we want a +2 helmet with a 10% reservation essence mod. This can get somewhat expensive, but is sadly necessary. We also need to hit this helmet with reservation implicits, and the tiers of both the essence mod and the Eldritch implicit will be adjustable based on the values you got on your amulet.
The easiest way to craft this item is to purchase a fractured +2 level of all minion skills and roll that with the highest tier of reservation essence until you get good surplus mods.

Skin of the Lords

We want a Skin of the Lords for it’s general stats. 100% increase to global defences is an absurd stat, and the +2 level of socketed gems giving our domblow another +2 levels. Ideally we want this to allocate Resolute Technique to save us two points. If such a chest does not exist we can settle for a skin with the correct links, and a notable that does not hurt us. We really, really want the RT chest though, passive points are precious after all.

Big boy Cluster

It’s time to get ourselves a really juicy Large Cluster. For this we are going to need a 12 passive minion jewel with the following modifiers:

35% increased effect of small passives
Small passive skills grant: Minions have 3% increased attack and Cast Speed.
Small passive skills grant: +8 to maximum life (if you can get 9 or 10 that is amazing, but we’re shooting for 8)

The final affix on your cluster can be whatever you prefer, some options are as follows:

Small passive skills grant: +# to all elemental resistances – this is huge for alleviating suffix pressures across the gear
Small passive skills grant: +# to dexterity – This is helps to cap our Dex requirements and eases up suffixes
Small passive skills grant: +# to attributes – This also helps to alleviate dex issues, but is obviously worse at that than raw dex would be
These three are likely the strongest, but also most expensive options.

You can also settle for most notables, as they will bring the price down due to being worse than the small node would be.

Exactly what to get on this jewel is up to you, I have outlined my preferences and you have to let the market and your coinpurse dictate the decision. Just keep in mind that the rest of the gear will be easier to do if the cluster solves problems.

Special jewels

There are a number of alternate quality gems and awakened gems this build can make use of. Many of them provide truly massive benefits, such as Woke Melee Phys granting us intimidate. These should be purchased when they fall within your budget. Exactly when that is, will vary from league to league so the only advice I can reasonably give here is to watch the market and make decisions accordingly.

Ghastly Eye Jewels

Finally it is time to polish up our Ghastly Eye jewels.
At this point we are going to want four moded jewels if that is possible.
We will now be looking for all of the four candidates from before, life/Increased if recently/Attack Speed/Flat phys.
I would advice that you replace these one at a time and get some reasonably good ones, but at the end of the day it’s up to you.

This concludes the Dominating Blow gear progression, and you should now be comfortably wacking your way across wraeclast.