When it comes to melee on league start, you’ve pretty much only got one safe option at this point and that build is Boneshatter Juggernaut. This build has almost everything that you could possibly want: excellent clear, excellent movement speed, it’s extremely tanky, and has lots of recovery built into it. It has a very straightforward gearing path. The only difficult item to obtain can be the weapon if you are apprehensive about crafting. But is it worth it? Let’s check out.
4.9Boneshatter Juggernaut Pros and cons
Pros:
- It has good damage scaling (good effectiveness of damage – the melee strike range, and then it’s got the whole trauma stacking beyond that, as well as the extra clear);
- One of the tankiest build with a decent damage in the game right now;
- Doesn’t need too much currency to set up;
- Great mapping;
- Easy for beginners.
Cons:
- Solo-target damage is not as high as everyone could want;
- Leveling is slower than Hexblast Miner or Lightning Arrow Pathfinder for example.
For those who have already decided on the build they want to play on, we have a great service, which will help you not to waste time looking for the right items – PoE Build Improvement.
Boneshatter Juggernaut Playstyle and Mechanics
When you start attacking enemies, you will get buff up in the top left called Trauma. What this buff does is the stacking buff that gives us more damage as well as damage taken to ourselves. The Juggernaut is able to mostly ignore all of the self- damage thanks to his ascendancy.
You’ll notice that there are little pulses that happen around the enemies that you’re attacking. And because you have things like Ancestral Cry, you’ll see that you’re attacking a lot of different targets at once. So when the mob packs are pretty dense, you get some big AoE pops going on.
The whole idea behind this is that Boneshatter deals physical damage to us, hence we stack armor as much as we can to prevent that physical damage. However, that prevented physical damage is being regenerated at 1.5 percent over the last ten seconds. So it’s just ramping our recovery that entire time. So this allows us to completely ignore that negative of it.
Leveling Tips for Boneshatter Juggernaut Build
The Marauder doesn’t have access to very much accuracy besides a couple of nodes, so we have to take them as it’s very important for later on. Kinetic Impacts is the node that is very powerful and you should not skip. The main reason being vital is that it gives you stun duration, and that’s going to increase the AoE of Boneshatter later on.
Then you need to grab Call to Arms and a little bit of life. This is just a quality of life buff. Call to Arms is very, very powerful. You can put your Warcries on your left click and forget about them for the rest of the game.
To facilitate leveling up we want to get onslaught as early as we can. Hatchet Master gives us a 20 percent chance to gain an onslaught for 4 seconds which is going to make us move faster. We do need a little bit of mana leech. With this node you can drop mana flasks completely early on in the game.
Then we head over to probably the most difficult to understand concept for this build and that is going to be Precise Technique. So we completely give up the ability to do Critical Strikes, so we can deal 40 percent more attack damage if our accuracy rating is higher than our maximum life. The whole idea here is that now we are going to try to focus on balancing our accuracy and balancing our life so that our accuracy is just a little bit higher than whatever our max life total is.
One other good thing about being the Juggernaut is that when we do get our second ascendancy which is Undeniable, we are able to gain a bunch of base accuracy because of this and we are able to increase our attacks based off of all this accuracy that we’re stacking. And if you still have troubles with leveling or just don’t want to repeat the same boring steps, you can buy our PoE Power Leveling.
Boneshatter Juggernaut Ascendancy points
- First Ascendancy node should be Untiring because it slightly increases Life regeneration.
- Second node is Unstoppable because it gives 10% increased movement speed and Cannot be Stunned effect, which will be the best nodes for leveling.
- Third node is Undeniable, and there is the moment where you can start stacking your accuracy for tons of damage.
- The last node is Unbreakable which is vital for increasing our defense.
Boneshatter Juggernaut Passive Tree
Now let’s see how we deal with Passive Tree.
Early Game Passive Tree
There you need to aim for 0,4% of mana and life leech node, then go left, but after you will be ready to stack accuracy, take Precise Technique node.
Mid-game Passive Tree
There are not much changes from the early game (as expected), but you’ll need to refund some passives and rebuild beginning of the skill tree (you can do it by acquiring extra passives so they will build the new way from the very beginning, and then refund all you don’t need).
End Game Passive Tree
Your final tree should look like this. There you should’ve already obtained some spell suppression items for more damage, and in this case, this tree will work perfectly.
PoB
We’ll give you three PoBs: early game, mid game and end game:
- Early game;
- Mid game;
- End game (very expensive version).
Boneshatter Juggernaut Gem setup
Once you clear the “Siren’s Cadence” quest in Act 1, you will be able to acquire the Shattering Steel, which will likely be your main gem until the first Lab.
Gem Setup for Leveling
Level 1-8:
- Splitting Steel;
- Chance to Bleed Support;
- Onslaught Support.
Level 8-18:
- Splitting Steel;
- Maim Support;
- Chance to Bleed Support for damage;
- Onslaught Support for speed;
- Lesser Multiple Projectiles Support for clear.
Level 18-31:
- Splitting Steel;
- Vicious Projectiles Support;
- Maim Support for damage;
- Onslaught Support for speed (in case you didn’t pick the Hatchet Master node);
- Lesser Multiple Projectiles Support for clear.
Level 31-38 (in case you haven’t already moved to Boneshatter):
- Splitting Steel;
- Impale Support;
- Vicious Projectiles Support;
- Slower Projectiles Support for damage;
- Lesser Multiple Projectiles Support for clear.
What about transferring to our main skill – Boneshatter? You can transfer to Boneshatter whenever you like, but we recommend to do it around the first Lab. The things that you need are the first lab (Untiring ascendancy node), Tribal Fury node, and the Attack Mastery that gives non-vaal strike skills to target one additional nearby enemy.
Midgame Gem Setup
So once you moved to Boneshatter, you should aim for this gem setup:
| 6-links | 4-links | 3-links |
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Note that you need to press the Ancestral Protector, and then Vaal Ancestral Warchief, so they both can work at once and give you attack speed and damage bonus.
Gear Progression
Body
At early stage you should use any crafted armor with high amount of life, #% increased armor and resistances. That’s pretty much all that you really care about here, just get your resistances covered, as much armor as you can get on your gear and as much life as you can get on your gear as well. Then try to craft +#% chance to suppress spell damage. And after you farm some divines you will be able to buy 6-linked The Fourth Vow Devout Chainmail.
Axe
Sinvicta’s Mettle is pretty good for early game since it provides us Rampage and slightly increases physical damage. After you’ll be able to craft a good axe, you should aim for:
- #% increased attack speed;
- #% increased physical damage;
- + # to accuracy rating;
- adds # to # physical damage;
- #% chance to impale enemies on hit with attacks.
As many nodes you can cover, the better, so remember it.
Helmet
There you use only crafted rare helmets, the only modifiers you need are:
- +# to armor;
- #% increased armor;
- +# to maximum life.
Gloves
Use rare gloves with modifiers just like on helmet:
- +# to armor;
- #% increased armor;
- +# to maximum life.
Then switch to Tanu Ahi with as min-maxed rolls as possible.
Boots
There you should try to craft boots with these mods:
- 30% increased movement speed;
- #% increased attack and cast speed if you’ve killed recently (implicit);
- +#% to elemental resistances.
Amulet
Hinekora’s Sight. This is just a pretty solid amulet because it gives us a bunch of evasion which is going to be transformed into armor and all the accuracy that we need to be able to stay above our life total. Or rare with these mods:
- +# to accuracy rating;
- +# to maximum life;
- +# to intelligence (in case you don’t have any for skills).
Rings
Resistances and as much life as possible. Everything is simple.
Belt
The Magnate or rare belt (Stygian Vise):
- +# to maximum life;
- +# to elemental resistances.
Flasks
Don’t forget flasks. Flasks are very important. You should be trying to get needed flasks rolled well as early as you can. You do want gain charges on being hit by an enemy as well as just some good modifiers for your build.
What you should aim for:
- Quicksilver – 7% increased movement speed during effect;
- Granite – 42% increased armor during effect;
- Amethyst – 10% increased attack speed during effect;
- Sulphur – 39% reduced effect of curses on you during effect;
- Divine Life – grants immunity to bleeding for 10 seconds if used while bleeding.
Pantheon and bandits
- Major God: Soul of Lunaris: gives 1% additional Physical Damage Reduction for each nearby Enemy, up to 8%; 1% increased Movement Speed for every nearby Enemy, up to 8%
- Minor God: Soul of Ryslatha: Life Flasks gain 3 Charges every 3 seconds if it hasn’t been used for that period.
Nowadays any build requires 2 extra passive skill tree points, so our choice is to kill all the bandits.
4.9We hope we’ve put in enough details into the guide. Boneshatter is a pretty fun ability. It was probably one of the most solid league starters for melee, so we hope you’ll enjoy playing it. So, if you liked this guide, share it with your friends who like PoE as much we do.
