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You SPIN and you WIN - Cyclone Champion FULL BUILD GUIDE (PoE 3.26 Mercenaries)

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This guide details a "Cyclone Impale Champion" build in Path of Exile, focusing on a pure, high-speed melee playstyle that leverages the Champion ascendancy's enhanced fortification and taunt mechanics, along with the powerful impale damage scaling, for both mapping and bossing.

Hello everybody and welcome to the full

build guide for my Cyclone Impale

Champion. This build is pure Cyclone.

We're literally just spinning and

winning. No shock wave, no General's

Cry, no caston crit, just good old

Cyclone and impale. While I explain the

basics, here's some footage of a T16.5

map with both offensive and defensive

mods on it. Run at level 94 with about

20 divines invested into the character.

So, we're playing the new and improved

champion who was already a solid choice

for cyclone builds due to master of

metal, but now given the changes to his

fortification and taunt nodes, he is an

absolute top tier choice right alongside

the slayer. Or the foe now only costs

two ascendency points instead of four

and grants taunt on hit to the node

itself rather than on the node leading

into it, which basically just means we

get permanent 100% hit chance forgoing

the need for accuracy entirely and 15%

more damage for just two points. Already

starting off strong. Now, the keenite of

you will have noticed that only monsters

that we taunt cannot evade our attacks,

meaning that we actually have to, you

know, hit the monster successfully

before we get that 100% hit chance.

However, even if we have a literal 15%

chance to hit something, which is like

the worst case scenario due to having

zero accuracy on gear and then some map

or rare monster mods giving them extra

evasion, uh, we're playing Cyclone.

Remember, we're hitting anywhere from 8

to 10 times per second, and all we have

to do is land just one successful hit to

then have a 100% chance to hit them from

that point going forward. Oh, it's a

non-issue. Worthy foe is an absolutely

stacked node. Furthermore, the new

fortitude and unstoppable hero, uh,

they're good. Really good. Always having

your maximum fortification means that

just from the passive tree alone, you're

taking 26% less damage from hits and

have 18% more armor and evasion plus a

nice little 18% attack speed on top of

it all. But the main draw is obviously

the damage reduction from Fortify

itself. However, once you invest a bit

in the character, which we'll talk about

momentarily, you will absolutely feel

the damage boost from that 3% attack

speed per Fortify as well. Last but not

least, Master of Metal gives us a ton of

damage. About a quarter of the overall

damage on my current character comes

from this node alone. The main draw of

the node is the impale's last one

additional hit, with the added fizz for

each impale being the icing on the cake.

Normally, impales only last for five

hits on an enemy with each stack of

impale dealing 10% of the original hit's

damage. Which means that without any

further modifications, you can simply

think of impale at maximum stacks as 50%

more damage. So, the master of metal

node takes that 50% up to 60% from five

total impales to six. Moving on from the

champion specific stuff, let's dive

deeper now into the damage side of

things. Starting with more impale, we

already have those six impales thanks to

the champion. So, we then grab a seventh

from this node. And with the addition of

this node, this mastery, and the impale

support gem, the final result is a 100%

chance to impale on every single hit

with 7.7 total impales on each enemy.

Remember that mastery? with each impale

having 54% increased effect. In other

words, 7.7 * 15.4, which equals 118%

more damage from impale alone. That's

more than doubling our damage. Pretty

sick. Past impale, we're using a sword

and scaling with crits. That's pretty

self-explanatory, I think. But something

that does need to be explained is the

overall speed and AOE of this build.

Basically, uh, how do we clear maps?

Well, Cyclone has this special line

which at 20% quality says 20% increased

area of effect per 0.1 m to melee strike

range. So, uh, we're stacking strike

range. To put the power of this special

cyclone AoE scaling in perspective, the

awakened increased area of effect

support gym gives 54% AOE. Meanwhile,

this singular passive point gives us 60%

plus 1% regen plus 10% damage plus 20

strength. In total, we are sitting at

300% increased area of effect from the

strike range modifiers on the passive

tree alone. And for speed, well, we're

using a unique belt that gives us

permanent onslaught, 20% move and attack

speed, and then grabbing this cluster of

nodes for an extra 12%, which totals 32%

movement speed before your boots and

your flasks. This means that while

mapping, we're sitting at about 70%

increased movement speed. That's after

taking into account Cyclones 20% less

penalty, and that's only with 20%

movement speed on the boots, of course.

And as with everything in Path of Exile,

all of these numbers can be increased as

you progress and more importantly invest

more in your character. But as a

baseline, uh yeah, we got plenty of

speed and AOE to make the Cyclone feel

great while mapping. And for single

target, uh all you have to do is swap

out the regular cyclone gem for the

transfigured version Cyclone of Tumults.

Now, you only need to do this really on

pinnacle bosses and especially tanky map

bosses such as with T16.5s and T7s. I

want to make it clear that you will not

be constantly swapping your gems in and

out if you play this build. Heck,

sometimes I even just straight up forget

or just don't even care to swap and I

just run regular cyclone for everything.

But the reason why you would want to

swap in the first place is that cyclone

of tumult gives you about 43% more

damage over the regular cyclone, but

also gives you about 40% less movement

speed and a little bit less AoE on top

of it. So obviously the speed and the

AoE are both far more valuable stats

when you're just clearing maps. So

outside of giga juiced content, we're

sticking to regular cyclone. Finally,

for the defenses, uh we're playing the

champion. Permanent fortify by itself is

pretty great. Patch that. We're running

armor and evasion on gear to synergize

with unstoppable hero and then

generating endurance charges paired with

a replica badge of the brotherhood for

even more damage reduction. And that's

about it for the overview. I'll hop into

the game now to go over specifics. But

if what I've said this far is enough for

you, check out the POB in the

description below. It has multiple build

variants for your different progression

points, including leveling. And of

course, check out my stream at to

wish.tv/wygaming. Other than that, let's

continue. All right, time to explain

things a little bit further about the

build. Starting with the mercenary, as

I'm sure a lot of you are wondering what

the setup is. Now, the main parts here,

I would say the Relentless Fury. This is

a, you know, one alk unique gives you

calling strike. Very powerful. It's 10%

more damage essentially. Then I also

have a hunter chest piece. This is for

the you can apply addition an additional

curse with a warlord's ring which gives

you vulnerability on hit. It's important

to note that when you get curse on hit

from a source, it applies a level one

curse. So not the maximum effect that a

player would have, but nonetheless it's

still very good. Also, you need the mod.

You can apply an additional curse

because normally if your curse limit is

one, which is the default, if I, the

player, am applying a curse and then my

mercenary is also applying a curse,

it'll just constantly be overwritten.

So, you need the mercenary to have an

additional curse such that when he hits

the enemy, he can apply his curse on top

of your existing curse, which we are

using assassin's mark, so it's very

important. Past that, the comb's binding

belt is very powerful. Nearby enemies

convert 25% of their fizz into fire

damage. that is just gives you more

physical damage, maximum hit, which is a

very valuable stat as most enemies are

dealing physical damage. Uh, ignore the

Legacy of Fury here. This is for another

build. They just basically have 30%

movement speed and I guess there's a

chance for the uh 8% of the killed

enemies life to deal damage and a little

bit of an AoE. Not a big deal, though.

Also, the Eldrich Implicits do work on

mercenaries. So, for the gloves here,

the 15% chance to extinguish. Extinguish

makes enemies cannot apply elemental

ailments. This actually does work on the

mercenaries. Then I have mim on hit as

well cuz why the heck not. uh anvil just

for some extra block chance given that

this is a shieldbased mercenary. And

then past that, you're just looking

really for a determination aura on the

mercenary. Uh the mercenary basically

never dies. I did uh all pinnacle boss

content outside of the ubers with this

build. He didn't die a single time, so

it's safe to say he's always up and

always giving you his benefits such as

determination, such as vulnerability on

hit. There are many things you can do

with a mercenary. This is just one

possible setup. The more you invest, as

with everything in Path of Exile, the

more powerful you can become. Uh,

there's a Kingmaker two-handed unique

axe. I'll put it on screen now. It gives

you 50% critical strike multiplier,

which is obviously a gargantuan damage

increase, but it's safe to say you can

do a lot of things with your mercenary.

Now, uh, I'll briefly go over my gear

here. Number one, the sword. You're

looking for physical damage only. You

don't want any elemental damage on

there. Also, you want as high attack

speed and as high critical strike chance

on the sword as possible. The exquisite

blade is the best in slot base type

because the 50% global critical strike

multiplier, as you can see right there,

is an implicit, meaning it always is on

the item. So, a free 50% crit multi.

Like, who's going to not want that?

Obviously, everybody wants that. Um, if

you can get plus one level of socketed

gems, it's nice. It's not necessary

whatsoever. It is a prefix modifier, by

the way. So, obviously, just getting the

percent uh increased fizz/ accuracy,

which is called hybrid fizz, would

probably be better than this plus one uh

socketed melee, but you know, it is what

it is. For all of your armor pieces,

you're looking for armor and evasion

rating, the hybrid stats, strength and

dexterity, because that can roll spell

suppress and then also give you, you

know, some armor on top of that. Spell

suppress is a very, very, very, very

valuable stat. Past that, you do need a

little bit of intelligence. This is for

your assassin's mark. I have 54 here on

the helmet. That is a T2 roll, so I

could, you know, squeeze out some more

intelligence here. My assassin's mark is

currently sitting at level 18. So, if I

got, you know, like five more

intelligence, I'd probably get that up

to level 20 and get a little bit more

damage, but not a big deal. Past that,

you're literally just looking for life,

resistances, and armor and evasion

rating on literally every other piece of

gear. For the gloves here, the implicits

matter quite a bit. The gain one rage on

attack, it saves you a passive point,

which you normally would have to put

down here for gain one rage on melee

hit. Now, only having one source of rage

generation is kind of bad because uh you

know, it takes 15 seconds at a minimum

to get up to maximum rage because you

can only stack rage every once, but not

a big deal. Um, also the hits have 37%

chance to ignore enemy physical damage

reduction is very nice, especially when

paired with Bastion Breaker, which gives

you an extra 50%. So you have a total of

87% chance to just straight up ignore

the enemy's physical damage reduction.

So that's pretty good. There's also some

other implicit you can get, such as

just, you know, flat physical damage to

attacks is quite nice. Going back up

here to the helmet, the 6% fizz taken as

any element, it doesn't matter. Probably

don't want to do chaos given that you

won't have capp chaos res for a while

until you invest in your character, but

taken as any element, that's very

important. Then the 20% reduced mana

cost of attacks is actually quite

important for Cyclone. We're currently

sitting at a two mana cost per second on

Cyclone, but that is only because we

have the channeling skills have minus X2

mana cost craft on both of our rings. So

that just reduces it by a flat six. Then

we have the 20% reduced here. And then

we have the node up here, Spirit of War,

for an extra 15%. So that mana cost

reduction, the 35% in total between

these two things is quite important. For

the body armor, you looking for

literally just armor and evasion rating

as high as possible. the additional

physical damage reduction. Yet again,

mitigating physical damage is very

important. And then for the implicits,

yet again, 10% fizz taken as cold

damage, fire damage, lightning damage,

doesn't matter. And then I've opted to

go for the 20% crit multi for attack

damage. You can also go plus 1% maximum

uh resistances, which is obviously very

nice as well. The boots are actually the

worst piece of gear that I have. I'll

probably upgrade these very soon. Just

has, you know, life two res including

the chaos res. Don't need the dexterity

whatsoever. And then I've crafted on uh

the 100% chance to avoid being chilled

just, you know, for quality of life

during mapping. And then for the belt

and the amulet, these are the two unique

items I'm running right now. The badge

of the brotherhood gives you your

endurance charges are equal to your

maximum frenzy charges. And we're also

specking into a bunch of frenzy charges

on the tree. We have literally all of

them on the tree. We have anointed

frenetic just so we don't have to, you

know, travel up here and grab it

ourselves. And that gives you a maximum

of six endurance charges, which gives

you a lot of damage reduction. That is

an extra 24% physical and elemental

damage reduction. Not to mention the

damage boost that you get from stacking

the frenzy charges as well. And then to

actually generate the endurance charges,

we have down here disciple of the

unyielding. 8% chance to gain an

endurance charge on kill. That is plenty

to sustain us during maps. However, and

now moving to the belt, the perseverance

belt. This is a insanely good belt. But

that one line right there that says

melee hits which stun fortify. Yeah,

that actually does remove our endurance

charges given the badge of the

brotherhood line which says 25% chance

to lose an endurance charge when you

gain fortification. So when you stun an

enemy, you get fortify even though you

already are at maximum fortification all

the time thanks to champion right here.

You have your maximum fortification,

that doesn't matter because this still

counts technically as you gaining

fortification, which then gives you a

25% chance only when you stun an enemy

to lose an endurance charge on top of

that. In practice, we still basically

have 100% uptime while mapping on the

endurance charges, but there is some

points in time where you go from like

six down to four, maybe to three, up to

five. It'll kind of wiggle back and

forth, but for the most part, it does

feel very nice. You are sitting, let's

just say, at five out of six of your

maximum endurance charges on average.

Just keep that in mind. Hopefully, this

is an interaction that gets addressed in

the future, but it is what it is. Also,

given that the Perseverance is literally

a 1C unique, you can get a corrupted

version of it for probably very cheap as

well. I think I bought this for like 20

25 chaos with the implicit 16% to all

elemental resistances. Absolutely helps

out big time. You can also get percent

max life as an implicit and some other

stuff as well. You don't have to get the

all res if you don't want to. But the

main draw of this belt is the 1%

increased attack damage per 200 of the

lowest armor and evasion rating. You can

see here in hideout, this is without my

mercenary, without any buffs whatsoever.

13k armor and 17k evasion rating. So

that means it's using the lowest armor,

13,000 armor. So per 200, we get 1%

increased attack damage. Let's do some

quick math here. 13,000 divided by 200.

That means the belt is giving us 65%

damage completely unbuffed. And I

guarantee you if we move into a zone

here real quick, and we now have our

mercenaries determination aura, and I

have my flasks up, which will be up 100%

while we're mapping, we now are sitting

at actually uh 34,000 armor. And now our

lowest is 27,000 evasants. So we're

looking at 27,000 divided by 200, a 135%

increased damage from the perseverance

belt. Quite good. Past that, it's

basically everything that I explained in

that overview section of the video.

Another thing here is the thread of hope

unique jewel. You want a very large

ring, not any other ring size, the

small, medium, massive, none of those.

You want very large specifically. Also,

if you don't know how to search for a

modifier like that, click on stat

filters, type the tilda key. That's the

key above your tab key. Go shift and

then the key above your tab key, tilda.

And you want to type in only effect

ring. It'll show up right here. Only

effects passes and ring. Click that.

Click this and go down to very large.

Now, when you click this, you will see

only threat of hopes with very large.

And you can sort by elemental

resistances. Just buy the cheapest one.

Obviously, don't pay 12 divines for a

10% roll. You can just keep going,

going, going, going. Look at that. 11%

still 13 divines. Holy crap. What if we

go down here to, you know, eight

divines? There you go. Hey, 16 divine

cell. Holy moly. I always get sales

during videos, dude. I got to record

videos more often, bro. What the heck?

So, once you do have a thread of hope

with the very large ring, you are of

course allocating both disciple of the

unyielding and disciple of the slaughter

because you will be running replica

badge of the brotherhood. I want to

clarify, you don't get this thread of

hope until you get replica badge of the

brotherhood. So, keep that in mind. And

then you also want to go up here and

grab Spirit of Ward. This gives you your

mana leech. So you can actually drop

this leech node right here on the

passive tree if you were running this

because blood rage, if you didn't know,

blood rage gives you uh your melee

damage physical leech right here. It

says uh 1.2% of attack physical damage

as life. So you got your life leech

covered by blood rage and then you get

your mana leech covered by spirit of

war. Spec into that and then allows you

actually to spec out of these two nodes

right here. Thrill of the battle and

that reduced mana cost going into it.

You don't need these anymore whatsoever.

Actually saves you a passive point to

get that as well. And then finally for a

watcher's eye here, the most important

mod by far is impales you inflict last

two additional hits while using pride. I

already talked about why impale is so

powerful with this build. So getting two

additional hits, it's really really

really good. That is the only mod that

you need. I got the intimidate on hit uh

while using pride as well just for 10%

extra damage, but you can get intimidate

from other sources such on those Eldrich

implicits on your gloves. You can give

them to your mercenary. You can also get

awakened melee physical damage. This is

obviously with higher investment which

gives you at level five at least 10%

chance to intimidate on hit as well

which opens up a bunch of modifiers for

Watchers Eye. You can also run

determination mods on the Watcher's Eye

such as additional physical damage

reduction while using determination

because your mercenary will be giving

you determination 100% of the time. And

then last but not least, the last big

ticket upgrade which I cannot afford

right now that I would go for on the

build is of course the celestial brace

gauntlets. But as you can see they are

quite expensive. Now, the reason why

these are expensive is because GGG hit

us with a all-time classic, nerfing the

drop rate without telling us. Yep, no,

it wasn't in the patch notes whatsoever.

They swapped the drop rate of the

celestial brace with the crystallized

omniscience. So, these are a 2% chance

to drop from uber Xark, not regular

exark. They only drop from the uber, the

hardest version of the fight, 2% of the

time. So, they giga nerfed the drop rate

of these, but make no mistake, they are

absurdly powerful. So, if you can't

afford these, you're going to be going

crazy mode once you do get them because

they go up to 10 maximum fortification.

Another major thing about this build is

stun immunity. Given that we are not

running unwavering stance because we're

using evasion rating and using cyclone,

uh you want to be as close to stun

immune as possible. The most important

thing here is to grab the soul of the

Brighten King. You do not need to use

any divine vessels to get the additional

mods. You just need the initial one,

which is you cannot be stunned if you've

been stunned or blocked a stunning hit

in the past 2 seconds. That plus the

flask mod which says a chance to avoid

being stunned during flask effect will

more or less give you complete stun

immunity. You'll occasionally get

stunned only by like the really tough

maps. You get hit very hard to get

stunned for like you know half a second

or something and it happens very very

rarely. But this flask mod plus the

pantheon is more than enough. It feels

fantastic. You will not be constantly

getting staggered from stuns. Don't

worry about that. And one last thing

here with the build. Uh when you are

progressing through the more difficult

content and you feel you need a little

more damage, you will swap to cyclone of

tumult. So, just literally take this

gem, put it in for the regular cyclone,

swap it out. But the most important

part, do not forget this, is go down

here to your hot bar. Look at this.

You're using a cyclone with no links.

That is this regular cyclone cuz you

still have it socketed in your gear. So,

you want to click this, find your linked

cyclone of tumult, and then swap over to

it. Now, you will be using the correct

cyclone. Do not forget that step. It is

absurdly important. And then, when you

swap back, obviously remember to do it

again. So, regular cyclone goes back

into my links. Go down here. Go to

regular cyclone. Obviously, if you

already have level 20 gems, you don't

need to worry about this. This was just

in here for gaining experience. So, you

can actually keep this gem in your

inventory like that. And then, I believe

when you swap it out, it should put it

in the right spot given that you tell it

to do that. So, now when I swap back,

boom, now it's regular cyclone. Boom.

Now, it's cyclone of tumult. So, if you

already have level 20 gems, you can just

keep it in your inventory and you can

avoid that. However, if you are still

leveling up your gems, keep in mind that

you're going to have to manually swap

down here the hot bar. All right. And

other than that, if you're looking for

gem links and whatever, it's in the POB

in the description below. There are

multiple build variants based on your

points of progression and the amount of

investment you want to do on the

character. Other than that, thank you

very much for watching. Check out my

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YouTube Transcript:You SPIN and you WIN - Cyclone Champion FULL BUILD GUIDE (PoE 3.26 Mercenaries)