Trial of the Ancestors Meta Report 1

Welcome to the Path of Exile Trial of the Ancestors Week 1 Maxroll news wrap-up. We're covering major events within the community, which hottest builds break the meta, economy updates and more!

Community Headlines

Before we get into the meta, let's start with the hottest community headlines from Trial of the Ancestors Week 1. We've got race winners, tons of loot and the return of Build of the Week.

Ubers Down

Ben, known as Darkee or Lightee7 has done it again! This time he took down all of Path of Exile's Uber Bosses (ssfhcbtw), in a single session! He managed to make this look easy and we look forward to his new Divination Card.

It might be time to up the difficulty by adding Uber-Uber bosses, or to make it a requirement that you must defeat all Uber bosses with both Chaos Inoculation and Eldritch Battery allocated!

Empy Found the Loot!

Speaker of the Dead allows tormented spirits to possess you. This also allows you to touch nearby monsters, increasing their danger... and their loot! By stacking a bunch of ghosts, then touching monsters within the map, you're able to maximize the rewards to the point where it doesn't even fit on the screen.

New exiles might not be used to this level of Magic Find insanity, where the screen is frequently covered in valuable items. The last time we saw something like this was a year ago in 3.18, Sentinel League.

Empyrian specializes in group Magic Find strategies, getting into a party with up to 5 other exiles and often spending multiple Divine Orbs on each map he runs to make sure it has as much content (and therefore loot) as possible. In the past, you were able to generate so many items that the game crashed if you pressed "alt" and disabled your loot filter. Now with speaker of the dead we're seeing quite a lot of items, many of which are quite valuable, like Brother's Gift. What other awesome farming strategies enabled by the 16 new Atlas Passive Keystones, still haven't been publicized?

Have a Unique Build?

If you have a unique or unusual build, consider submitting it to Path of Exile's official Build of the Week series! This series is a longtime Path of Exile tradition, which has often focused on the weird and wacky. Maxroll's very own Palsteron was featured in Season 11 with his Static Strike Shockwave Slayer. If you want to play the build yourself, you can find it here.

Trial of the Ancestors Starters

What are some of the builds people have found the most success with in Trial of The Ancestors week 1, and what are some of the builds that have fallen out of the META? Let's take a look at Day 3.

Biggest Winners

A Surprise winner here is Lightning Arrow Deadeye, which moved from 4th most popular to the most popular build in Trial of the Ancestors! Hexblast Mine Saboteur is also significantly more popular, moving from rank 5 last league to rank 2 this league. This accounts for the most popular speed mapping build and most popular boss killer. Neither build excels at the league mechanic but both are well-rounded enough that they can tackle most of the content Path of Exile has to offer.

Exsanguinate Rising

Another big winner is Exsanguinate. For a while this skill a while sat in the shadow of Seismic Trap, being used to clear and largely escaping notice. But with the recent buffs to Pathfinder, and possibly because there were many players looking to play something while waiting for their bricked Impending Doom Support build to get fixed Poison Exsanguinate Pathfinder became quite popular. Fire out tendrils of blood that which Chain across the screen to inflict Poison on your enemies.

Being a Physical based Poison build, you're able to leverage a lot of inexpensive unique items including Cold Iron Point, Dendrobate and Ming's Heart for easy damage scaling. Pathfinder ensures you have 100% uptime on your flasks which feels great and frees up Suffixes on your gear for damage. Overall this is a solid build that slipped under the radar in the pre-league fervor.

Biggest Losers

We've also seen several builds fall from grace. Toxic Rain Pathfinder went from 3rd in Crucible to 9th in Trial of the Ancestors. This is probably because as more players gravitate to Pathfinder, they opt for a Poison build. Builds like Impending Doom, Poison Exsanguinate, or Poison Spark don't use totems and get to take advantage of Master Toxicist for additional clear speed. Toxic Rain Pathfinder is still a great build, and if you've never played Toxic Rain before it's absolutely worth trying at some point in the future.

Righteous Fire also saw a drop in popularity going from #1 last league down to #4 this league. This is likely because Righteous Fire is not an ideal build for the league mechanic. It's still a great build and excels in other areas of the game, but other entries on the list deal with Trial of the Ancestors better including Lightning Arrow Deadeye, Spark Inquisitor, Summon Raging Spirit Necromancer, or Explosive Arrow Ballista Elementalist.

Venom Gyre Deadeye also significantly dropped in popularity. In this case, Lightning Arrow just does the job better. Both are speedy builds, but Bows don't require precise positioning to deal damage.

Skill Tattoos & Build Making

The Passive Skill Tattoos will have a big impact on builds in Trial of the Ancestor League, and we're already seeing players begin to experiment with converting their Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence nodes into other powerful bonuses. Many builds have spare attributes which can be converted via Tattoos, for example a Pathfinder can use the Tattoo of the Tawhoa Herbalist to get enough Flask Effect Duration to keep their Flasks active 100% of the time, this frees up valuable affixes elsewhere on gear. If you want to know more about how Passive Skill Tattoos affect the build making process, stay tuned for future Meta Reports!

Currency News

With a new league comes a new farming meta, and Ancestor League week 1 is no different! Here's a few of the ways industrious Exiles are generating massive amounts of Divine Orbs.

Forbidden Sanctum Farming

Use a Forbidden Tome to enter the Forbidden Sanctum where dangerous monsters, tricky traps, and many Divine Orbs await! The Forbidden Sanctum got a bit of a facelift, and Rare Monsters now appear alongside the elite Templar guardians. You're also no longer able to interact with enemies located off the edge of your screen.

Another change is that your Defense stats (Armour, Evasion, and Energy Shield) apply within the Forbidden Sanctum. GGG's goal here is to disincentivize players from just making glass cannon Sanctum Runners with no health or defenses. If you want the best rewards, be prepared to defeat the Sanctum's "secret boss" Lycia, Herald of the Scourge.

Doing so yields special Unique Relics which modify the difficulty and rewards from the Forbidden Sanctum! This includes giving you the ability to drop 2 additional Forbidden Tomes on your next run, allowing you to run more Sanctums! Forbidden Sanctum is rare and difficult, as such it's remained extremely rewarding with Divine Orbs being offered frequently on later floors. When you fail a run, check out the trade site to purchase Relics to increase your chance of success next time.

Trial of the Ancestors

In Patch 3.22.0b the loot from Trial of the Ancestors got a significant buff! Players who spend Silver Coins to enter Hinekora's Tournament will find ample rewards. The league mechanic offers more Divination Cards, Scarabs, and Currency items. A lot of players have been farming Trial of the Ancestors as a result of this buff, leading to rare drops appearing on the market like Hinekora's Lock.

Hungry for More?

But that's the Meta Report for Trial of the Ancestors Week 1 including community highlights, top builds, and currency news.

LA Deadeye

Ancestor Loot Buff

Craft with Rog

Then head over to our Discord and select the Path of Exile role in #roles to stay up to date with our content development. Stay sane, Exile!

Written by: Tenkiei

Reviewed by: Xtra37