Ultimatum league guide / hub (poe ultimatum 3.14)

Impactful non-League-related changes

Because there are so many improvements which were made for this 3.14 release, I felt the necessity to pinpoint some of them. First of all, a lot of highly valueable, sought-after drops have been moved away from being a League-exclusive and were added in to the main drop pools. This means that any monster you kill in the game (above zone-level 40) could now drop the infamous Headhunter which does provide a little bit more potential “rush” from doing any content.

Next up, they’ve added numerous new Atlas specific base-types meaning that you’ll be able to farm bases in certain regions of the Atlas only. Examples of these were things like Steel Rings before. The teased Seaglass Amulet provides a % faster start of Energy Shield Recharge implicit.

Other than a lot of reworked rewards, changes to a lot of dated League-Content, new vendor recipes, the major change that a large part of players were waiting for is finally here. You will now be able to check your obtained Labyrinth Enchants before choosing which items they go on. You will be offered three helmet enchants and one of each for gloves/boots. This allows you to more adequately pick enchants and choose which item you are going to end up enchanting. This is a huge buff to Labyrinth Runners!

Items

These items are introduced to the Ultimatum leagues and are exclusive to Ultimatum league:

Unique items

The following items are exclusive to the league’s reward system

The following items are exclusive to the Trialmaster on wave 10 of an Ultimatum

Miscellaneous

Испытания и награды[]

Основная статья: Испытания и награды лиги Ультиматум

Лига Ультиматум включает в себя 40 испытаний. За их выполнение игрок получает следующие микротранзакции:

Temporary leagues

Temporary leagues have a set duration, which can vary from 12 minutes to four months. They are usually defined by specific modifiers or features that the permanent leagues don’t have. When a league ends, the characters are not lost but transferred to one of the permanent leagues.

Challenge leagues

A visualization of how challenge leagues interact with permanent leagues.

Periodically, two new leagues are created and the previous two challenge leagues are removed. These leagues are intended to introduce and test new content while providing players with a fresh economy. Challenge leagues are currently released on a 13 week cycle. In addition, each pair of leagues has a set of optional challenges that can be completed for a prize.

When a challenge league ends, all characters and their stash will be sent to their respective parent league (either Standard league or Hardcore League). Map progress will be transferred, along with Shaped maps and Sextants.

List of challenge leagues

The challenge league currently running is the Expedition league.

Main page: Races

Race leagues are temporary leagues created specifically for a single race event.

These leagues have their own stash. At the end of the event, characters and their stashed items will be moved to the parent league, which is typically Hardcore or Void league. The player’s race stash may be placed in remove-only stash tabs if the parent league has no empty tabs. A list of race modifiers is .

Items

These items are introduced to the Ultimatum leagues and are exclusive to Ultimatum league:

Unique items

Miscellaneous

Best League Starters TL;DR

This page covers the builds that we have picked out to be excellent choices to be your League Starter. Whilst some of the are more notorious for being strong early game, others might have risen up there because they bring a decent early game but scale into the end game so easily. Note that within each tier, the builds are not in order.

You can read below to get more details about each of the builds we mentioned.

Challenges and rewards

Main page: List of ultimatum league challenges

The Ultimatum leagues include 40 optional challenges. Completing them awards the following microtransactions:

When you complete 12 challenges, you will receive the Ultimatum HelmetUltimatum HelmetHelmet SkinChanges the appearance of any equipped helmet to the Ultimatum Helmet.. When you reach 24 challenges, you will receive the Ultimatum PetUltimatum PetSummons your pet. At 36 challenge completed you’ll receive the Ultimatum Portal EffectUltimatum Portal EffectPortalThis character’s portals use the Ultimatum Portal Effect.. These microtransactions are only obtainable in this league.

From the 19th challenge onwards and for every third challenge after that, you will receive pieces of the Ultimatum Totem Pole decoration to display in your hideout. The Totem Pole permanently showcases how many of the Ultimatum challenges you completed during the league.

Honorable Mentions

Aside from the top picks in the list, there’s multiple other guides that can be played as a league starter. However, they might require you to farm some a couple of Chaos Orbs whilst leveling up to pick up a necessary unique, fall of after the story line or rely on some skill swaps to make them feel great. They’ve therefore not made an appearance in the Best League Starters but still deserve to be referenced on this page. More information about them is to be found inside the guide.

• Volatile Dead Slinger Necromancer
• Cyclone Champion
• Cyclone Gladiator
• Explosive Trap Saboteur
• Shattering Steel Champion
• Earthquake Juggernaut
• Scourge Arrow Pathfinder
• Warchief UberLabber Champion
• Soulrend Trickster

S+-Tier Builds

April 16th Update:: The flavor of the month seems to be shifting a little bit towards inquisitors instead of necromancers so in the future we might end up pushing Inquisitors up. For now, Necromancer is still the S-tier build. .

Detonate Dead got rediscovered in Heist League and has quickly risen to be a top tier meta build ever since. Providing exquisite tankyness and scaling mostly through the Ascendancy & High Health Spectres it is very easy to play in any environment. Therefore, it definitely has its place in the S-Tier section of the Tier list.

Raise Spectre Necromancer

April 16th Update: The guide has changed less than we would assume since it remained incredibly potent & popular.

Even after another set of really tough nerfs on the Necromancer Ascendancy & the Raise Spectre Gem the combination of the two still remains ludicrous. Spectre builds are still the top tier pick if you want a mixture between extreme bosskilling potential and clear speed at the earlier budgets.

We have a second Raise Spectre guide for you to enjoy, which focuses on Slave Drivers for a bit of a more nostalgic touch.

Poison Bladefall Bladeblast Assassin

April 16th Update: Eventhough the Assassin & Blade Blast nerfs, people will still take a liking for playing it as it does remain fairly strong. Obviously, BFBB has been on top of the meta and is destined to stay there for quite a while.

Being a Poison build and being able to stack Poisons on bosses is generally considered overpowered if the skill does well without Poison too. This is very much the case as you don’t need any ramping to kill trash packs so you basically get all your boss damage investment for free. A clear S-Tier pick in our book.

Freezing Pulse Totems Hierophant

April 16th Update: People seem to have taken a dislike for Hierophant & Totem builds in the past. We’re still adamant about Totem builds and their strengths, especially after recent buffs/discoveries and will keep it here for that reason.

The Hierophant Ascendancy lost its biggest perk by the removal of the Ascendancy node that made you summon two Totems instead of one. This has altered the build a little bit but we feel very strongly about its potential, still, even after the changes. Because it’s a Totem build, it pops off relatively early, making it an incredible league starter.

Poison Blade Vortex Assassin

April 16th Update: Poison BV once again will be one of the most popular league starters, even though it got nerfed.

Poison Blade Vortex still packs a ridiculous amount of damage whilst staying relatively tanky even at the earlier levels of mapping. Since it’s useable starting from whenever you pick up the first labyrinth and stays potent right until the most endgames of encounters, it warrants a spot on top of the League Starters ladder.

Reap Build Ideas

Reap is not too far off in terms of concept when compared to Exsanguinate. It is, again, a Physical spell stacking a damage over time debuff. Once again, like all the new blood-themed skills, Reap too does have a Life cost to pay instead of the usual Mana cost for spells and attacks.

Because of this, some players have already come up with a solution that allows them to bypass the Life cost entirely, and that is to use the skill on a Spellslinger link. Spellslinger is a Support Gem that allows players to link a spell to it and have it cast while attacking with a wand, and this makes the associated skills go off without paying their cost. The issue here is that Spellslinger reserves Mana, so reduced Mana reservation nodes might be needed. The silver lining is that Spellslinger is not limited to a single setup, which means that players can use even more skills by triggering them this way. The Ascendant is a good fit here.

However, a great benefit of Reap is that if it doesn’t kill enemies with the secondary DoT debuff, then the skill gains a Blood Charge and it deals more damage (which, «more» in Path of Exile is a sort of final damage multiplier that comes into play after all other sources of «increased» damage). The charges can stack up to 5 but they are lost whenever an enemy dies while affected by the DoT. This means that a good way to have them up at all times would be to pair the skill with Avatar of Fire. Avatar of Fire is a Keystone that makes players unable to deal damage that is not Fire damage, while also converting 50% of all other damage sources into Fire. Playing Reap with this combination would result in the skill never losing any charge.

As for the defensive boons, Reap can be paired with Physical damage leeched as Life, Life Regeneration, Life Flasks, or even the same block combo discussed above in the Exsanguinate section. Being it an area skill, it is going to work well in terms of clearing, and it can scale even better against bosses thanks to Intensify Support. Even better if it is used with the Assassin and his awesome single-target DPS.

Exsanguinate Build Ideas

Exsanguinate is a promising new skill added alongside Ultimatum, and it is a Physical spell that deals high amounts of Physical damage and applies a Physical damage over time debuff (not bleed). The spell is cast in a narrow cone and can target several targets at once, making it good for both clearing and single-target DPS. It is likely that it’s going to work very well with Petrified Blood (another new, blood-themed skill) to take advantage of playing a Low Life character and deal even more damage thanks to Pain Attunement.

Given the nature of the damage over time applied by Exsanguinate stacking up to three times, the skill could see some Unleash action. Unleash is a Support Gem that stores charges the longer the players don’t cast the supported skills, and then a single cast is repeated a number of times equal to the charges spent this way. As such, another good option could be pairing Exsanguinate with mines, and playing the build as if it were a regular Glacial Cascade Saboteur.

Otherwise, the DoT debuff can simply be scaled with other supports, nodes, items, and classes granting extra damage over time multiplier. The best option here would be the Trickster Ascendancy class, with the Gladiator and the Ascendant also being nice choices, as they all scale DoT and some nice defensive bonuses. Another option to further increase the damage over time from this build would be to use another new gem, in the form of Corrupted Fever. This spell consumes the player’s Life but adds the Corrupting Blood damage over time to hits dealt. Corrupting Blood, much like Exsanguinate’s debuff and bleed, does scale with damage over time multiplier.

As for defenses, a great way to stay safe in Ultimatum—which is a League with a heavy theme of risking items and loot by facing increasingly difficult encounters—would be to go the block route. Block was never really popular up until two big changes were made: first, the Glancing Blows Keystone was added via Timeless Jewels from Legion (and, subsequently, directly on the passive skill tree); second, affixes granting a percentage of the players’ Life, Mana, and Energy Shield were added to the mod pool of shields.

Glancing Blows is a phenomenal Keystone that doubles one’s Chance to Block Attacks and Spells at the cost of taking 65% of the damage coming from all blocked hits. The mods that make gamers recover a small percentage of Life, Mana, or Energy Shield when they block is also a great fit with block-based builds, regardless if they use Glancing Blows or not. With this in mind, builds revolving around one or more of these elements are likely to succeed in Ultimatum, because the clear speed for Exsanguinate sounds very promising, and the single-target damage can be good too.

S-Tier

April 16th Update: The gear requirements of the build have proven to be lower than expected last league as most items were a lot cheaper than they usually are. Therefore, this build was moved up to be an S-Tier pick now as it provides exquisite Clear, Speed & Damage on a relatively medium budget.

Storm Brand will almost always remain a top pick as long as the skill is functional & playable because of how it works mechanically. Being able to drop some brands and dodge on bosses whilst being able to control the environment with recalls, the playstyle just allows people to play a lot more aggressively than on other builds.

Toxic Rain Trickster

April 16th Update:: we’re predicting the META is more shifting back in favor of the Trickster as the scaling on Toxic Rain changed. It actually looks like Toxic Rain will be a stronger league starter than it was before the nerf due t o scaling.

Toxic Rain and its newly researched mechanics have not been changed whatsoever. This means that even though its Ascendancies got nerfed a little bit the build still packs plenty of bunch to be considered by a lot of people as a league starter. We predict the build to be very widely present and amongst the best builds in the game when it comes to clear and boss killing potential at the start of a new League.

Arc Elementalist

April 16th Update: As Arc remains a very warm welcomed skill for all sorts of players, it still has a spot amongst the most popular skills.

Arc and more in particular this iteration of the build packs an incredible amount of punch without being to complicated to gear making it exquisite all around for new or less new players.

Essence Drain Trickster

April 16th Update: Being further in the league, the popularity of ED will drop because it shines in scenarios where you don’t have a lot of currency to invest. Therefore, it’s a top League Start pick.

Essence Drain brings incredible clear speed through Contagion and respectable boss damage combined with Blight. On top of that, it lines up with a lot of Passive Tree pathing to get relatively tanky early on in a characters progress netting them a highly ranked overall spot.

Bladefall Bladeblast Chieftain

April 16th Update: Given the recent changes to both Assassin and Chieftain both are fairly balanced out in terms of amount of people playing the builds. I would argue Chieftain is a lower tier because scaling Poison builds is just absolutely insane where as this build focuses more on being tankier. Blade Blast remains one of the strongest skills in the game.

Blade Blast remains one of the strongest skills in the game as it has the potential of deleting entire screens at once whilst having respectable boss damage even though it mostly invests into being tanky.

About the List of Builds

Hello, I’m TbXie, someone who has sunk over 25.000 hours in Path of Exile as of when I started to write Guides. That experience as well as getting as much insight as possible from other potent and top tier Path of Exile players is what determines whether a build guide is warranted a higher or lower ranking on this page. Whilst all of the writers, including myself, put in a tremendous amount of effort to get their guides updated before a new League, it’s important to us that this page helps you understand why and how you should be picking a build.

The build tier list has different subsections that will rank builds as per their strengths. A build might qualify as a top tier mapping build but not be considered any good for starting in a new and fresh economy or killing bosses. Overall, the emphasis on the build and whether you want it to be more defensive or offensive depends on the ultimate goal of the build and whether that includes tough content or just farming some extra currency.

Understanding Your Own Goals

While I could go on about why you could want to play the better tier of builds it is of utmost importance for you to understand what your goals are in the game. If you don’t mind having to play through the game at a slower pace or if you’re just in it to play whatever skill is fun, any of the Guides on this page have been written by exquisite players and will all get you to the endgame sufficiently. Sure, there might be a discrepancy between how fast, cheap and easy they are to play but by no means should you feel pressured to play S-Tier builds exclusively. Generally, it is recommended to play Spellcasters or Minion builds before dabbling into Melee or Bow archetypes as they are usually way harder to gear for and execute.

Permanent leagues

These four leagues exist permanently:

• Standard is the default league and has no modifiers.
• Hardcore has the hardcore modifier, meaning characters who die are moved to Standard. Hardcore is equivalent to permadeath in other RPGs, though characters and items are not automatically deleted.

In addition to standard and hardcore, a Solo Self-Found variant for each exists. In these leagues, player’s can’t trade or party with other players and have to rely solely on the items they find themselves.

• SSF Standard is the default league with the SSF flag
• SSF Hardcore has the hardcore and SSF flags

Characters used in certain races (notably Descent, Descent: Champions and Endless Ledge races) are afterwards sent to a Void League instead of being deleted. Players can’t access these characters or their inventories; void characters can only be deleted or kept as a sort of trophy.

B-Tier

April 16th Update: Having seen the same amount of play as it usually does, Herald of Agony remains one of those special skills that gets you everywhere at a lower budget.

If you’re looking for something super tanky that kills everything in the game – and is minmaxable very far – this is a build that you’d want to play! Being a mixture of a Cyclone & Minion build, it also suits a lot of players very well.

Fireball – Blazing Slavo Spellslinger Elementalist

April 16th Update: Spellslinger has lost a lot of popularity over the course of the last leagues but Fire Slinger has remained a solid leaguestarter regardless.

Fireball & Blazing Salvo, two Fire skills that work incredibly well together when being spell slung and don’t require much investment to get you through the earlier stages of your character’s progression. Therefore, we think it’s a very potent leaguestarter for both new & experienced players.

Bleed Bow Gladiator

April 16th Update: Bleed Bow builds have been popping off lately to the point where they’ve never been as popular as they were last league. Even with nerfs, we expect them to thrive early game.

Gladiator in combination with Bleed builds and even bows has been a decently strong build for quite a while now but as other builds get nerfed more and more, obviously others rise to peoples attention.

Ignite Penance Brand Elementalist

April 16th Update: A new build last league but it has risen to shine at the top of the buidlists. We keep it on a lower tier as it is quite complicated to get going.

As long as you understand the mechanics behind this build, it is incredibly potent and fun to play. It probably requires a higher tiering but because of those complicated mechanics, it remains here.

Carrion Golems Elementalist

April 16th Update: Carrion Golems were better than expected last league and have gotten nerfed a bit. Therefore, they’ve moved to the B-Tier.

Summon Carrion Golem has been nerfed quite “significantly” in the last patch. However, the build did ludicrous damage on a very acceptable budget and will still do very good damage on that budget even after the nerfs. The changes to Elementalist definitely helped the build’s defensive capabilities and allows it to mitigate both Elemental and Physical damage very adequately. We feel like the build definitely still warrants an A-tier mention.

Conclusion

It looks like Grinding Gear Games focused on revamping old content more so than anything else. The League-mechanic looks fairly simple in a sense that it just requires you to “kill more monsters” to “get more rewards” but the entirety of the announcement looks like one of their greatest accomplishments in a long time. A lot of people will enjoy all the newly reworked rewards both in SSF and Trade League environments.

I firmly stand to believe that from what we’ve seen so far, Path of Exile’s 3.14 Ultimatum Challenge League will be one of the most refreshing & fun in recent memory.

Ultimatum League will launch April 16th on PC and April 21st on Consoles.