Corrupting Cry Warbringer Guide

Single Target

• Ancestral Warrior Totem linked to Earthshatter grants comfortable single target damage from afar through clever use of the new Weapon Specialization System.
  • The totems remain active AND they keep all the stats they had from your weapons and passives when they were summoned. This means you can effectively "stat-stick" your second Weapon Set to empower your Totem Summons and then freely use Seismic Cry afterwards.
  • Which is very useful as Seismic Cry constantly detonates the spikes created by the Totem's Earthshatter for massive extra damage. A satisfying synergy that causes huge explosions.
  • Very easy/cheap gearing as the only stat necessary on your Weapon is +# to Level of all Melee Skills.
  • One +#% Chance to Inflict Bleeding on Hit Jewel enables Bloodlust

Mobility

• Shield Charge to move around quicker. Dodge Roll at the end of the Charge in order to prevent the swing animation. This causes it to be a lot faster. Beware that hitting terrain or monsters stops your Charge.
  • Linked to Ingenuity for extra cooldown uptime and Stomping Ground for some extra damage.
  • Cannot go through Monsters so mainly used to traverse from one pack of monsters to the next.
• Leap Slam to escape surrounding monsters
  • Flight speed is determined by the local Attack Speed of your Weapon (e.g. "Attacks per Second: 1.55") multiplied by all other sources of #% increased Attack Speed. This means Maces that have high Attack Speed speed up your Leap Slam. This is somewhat of a luxury stat but nice to have.
  • Linked to Holy Descent for some extra Life Regeneration when landing.

Persistent Buffs

• Activate your persistent buffs by opening your Skill Gem Menu and Right Clicking the skill icon left of the skill name. To see if it's active check if your Spirit value on top of your Mana Globe changes and the Buff icon swirls.
• Scavenged Plating provides a very substantial boost to your Armour.
  • At 20% Gem Quality, a Level 19 Scavenged Plating provides 70% more Armour to your character. "More" Armour means that it multiplies with the increases on your tree granting you a huge boost in survivability.
  • Level 19 causes it go from 4% More Armour per Scavenged Plating to 5%. You achieve this by linking a Level 18 Scavenged Plating to Physical Mastery. Going above Level 19 only increases the insignificant Thorns portion of the skill.
  • Link Cannibalism to gain large amounts of life on kill to keep your HP bar topped off.
• Overwhelming Presence makes stunning enemies slightly easier.
• Time of Need occasionally gets rid of pesky Ailments and Curses while sometimes coming in clutch with its heal.
  • Fast Forward to reduce the interval it activates.
  • Herbalism for a small boost to your Life Flasks.

Extra Utility

• Infernal Cry causes affected enemies to explode on death and grants rage.
  • Keep Infernal Cry at level 3 to reduce life costs.
  • Socket Raging Cry and Dazing Cry to gain Rage for yourself and apply Daze to nearby mobs. Mobility reduces the slowdown effect when you use the Warcry.
  • Use Infernal Cry before summoning your Totems to keep your Rage topped off and apply Daze to the monster.

Qualitying up your gems is inexpensive and offers lots of character power for very cheap. Make sure to use Gemcutter's Prism on your gems until they reach 20% Quality in the following order:

Seismic Cry → Scavenged Plating → Earthshatter → Ancestral Warrior Totem → Shield Charge → Everything else

Skill Gem Weapon Swap Setup

Properly set up your Corrupting Cry Warbringer Skill Gem functionality.

Open your Skill Gem tab and navigate to the extended Gem description

Here you can configure which Weapon Set your character swaps to when using the Skill. Open your inventory and put your weapon and shield setup in your primary Weapon Slot (I). This is your Seismic Cry swap. For the Ancestral Warrior Totem setup, put your +# to Level of all Melee Skills Two Handed Maces in your secondary Weapon Slot (II).

Ancestral Warrior Totem is the ONLY gem that you set to Weapon Set II (Untick I). Go through every other Skill Gem and set them to Weapon Set I. Untick II for these.

Now that your Skill Gems are set up correctly it's time to configure your Passive Skill Tree. Pay close attention to the instructions below the passive tree before allocating your nodes.

Weapon Set Specific Nodes

Setting up your Corrupting Cry Warbringer's Weapon Swap to dynamically change allocated nodes on your passive tree is extremely important.

Weapon Swap Points are passive points that can be allocated to only be active depending what Weapon Set is active. To allocate Weapon Set Specific Nodes there are three requirements:

• You have a Weapon Set Point Maximum higher than 0 (24 in the reference image). You acquire these throughout your campaign playthrough.
• You have unallocated Skill Points (9 in the reference image) in order to assign them to a Weapon Set instead of globally.
• You have selected which Weapon Set the following points should be assigned to. (Arrow on the left)

Pay close attention to which nodes are allocated Globally, which to Set I and which to Set II as you spec them.

For the attribute nodes take enough Intelligence and Dexterity to meet gear and support gem requirements, then use the rest on Strength. You can respec your attributes for gold if the requirements on your gear suddenly changes instead of waiting to level up.

The following stats scale your Corrupting Cry Warbringer

Offensive Scaling

• Corrupting Cry's damage over time component is scaled by how much Strength you have. As Strength also inherently grants you +2 maximum life per point getting as much of it as possible is the main priority.
• Ancestral Warrior Totems is scaled by +# to Level of all Melee Skills from your Weapons.
• Sources of #% increased damage: #% Warcry Damage, #% Global Physical Damage, #% increased Damage

Defensive Scaling

• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• Sources of +#% to Maximum Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistances to scale your elemental defenses into the endgame. For a min-maxed character the sources can be:
  • +#% to all Maximum Resistances from Prism Guard and its surrounding small nodes as well as Unnatural Resilience.
  • +#% to Maximum Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistances from Jewels and Rare Shields. Aim for Cold and Lightning on these as Fire can be acquired through Unnatural Resilience by aiming for high Fire Resistance rolls on each Suffix.

• +# to Strength because of the previously mentioned reasons.
• +# to Maximum Life. The importance of good life rolls is slightly reduced as your large amount of Strength already provides a substantial boost to your HP pool. Don't skip out on this entirely but focus on Strength and Resistances first and foremost.
• Most of the damage you take while mapping is Physical Damage. Armour massively reduces that damage, so look out for high Armour rolls on your gear. As Sturdy Metal grants a huge boost to your Body Armour, make sure that it has an especially good defensive value. Your Body Armour provides over 70% of your overall Armour. This means aiming for a Body Armour that has above 1500 Armour is heavily advised.
• A shield with a high % Block Chance. The Surrender is a solid option before you acquire a very good Rare Shield.
• If you are still struggling check out our Survival Guide for additional useful information!

Here's how you should gear your Corrupting Cry Warbringer. Sorted mostly in order of importance

Weapons

• Contrary to most other builds, there are almost no stats on Weapons that scale your damage output. Look for Weapons with the following stats:
  • Seismic Cry Setup I sorted by stat priority (1h or 2h + Shield)
    • Gain # Life per Enemy Killed - Huge boost to your survival while clearing packs of monsters, get a value as high as possible.
    • +# to Strength - The more strength the better.
    • Socket 2 Rebirth Rune into your weapon after using Artificer's Orb on it for extra survivability
    • +#% increased Attack Speed for slightly faster leap slams - luxury stat
    • +#% to Light Radius as it increases your mini map reveal radius - luxury stat
    • Attention, these stats do NOT scale your damage: Local weapon damage such as Adds # to # Physical Damage or #% increased Physical Damage, %# increased Attack Speed or anything else that's not Strength.
  • Totem Setup II (Dual wield 2 handers)
    • +# to Level of all Melee Skills
    • No other mods on weapons scale the damage of your Totems. Very easy gearing!

Body Armour

• #% increased Armour and +# to Armour - Focus heavily on this
• +# to Strength
• +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
• +# to Maximum Life
• +# to Spirit (When trying to fit extra reservations)

Shield

• Do not fix resistances with your shield in the endgame because using your Totems weapon swaps away your shield, leaving you vulnerable to elemental damage.
• #% increased Block Chance
• #% additional Physical Damage Reduction
• #% increased Armour and +# to Armour
• +# to Strength
• Svalinn paired with Renly's Training (Instead of Imploding Impacts) for absurd defenses. Svalinn is extremely expensive however.
• The Surrender as a potential earlier option

Gloves

+# to Strength
+#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
+# to Maximum Life
#% increased Armour and +# to Armour
#% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
Notable unique mentions: Aerisvane's Wings for extra clear through the hit component of Seismic Cry

Boots

• +#% to Movement Speed
• +# to Strength
• +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
• +# to Maximum Life
• #% increased Armour and +# to Armour
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)

Rings

• +# to Strength, +# to all Attributes and other attributes you may need
• +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
• +# to Maximum Life
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
• For min-max Breach Rings with Attribute Quality are very strong
• Notable unique mentions: Sekhema's Resolve and Ventor's Gamble

Amulet

• +# to Strength, +# to all Attributes and other attributes you may need
• +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
• +# to Maximum Life
• +# to Spirit (When trying to fit extra reservations)
• #% of Damage Taken Recouped as Life
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
• Anoint a node that isn't too costly but grants a decent boost in power until you have a really good Amulet. Parrying Motion is a decent option to help you cap your Block and grants some extra movement speed.
• Notable unique mentions: Astramentis to enable Blink, Defiance of Destiny for general recovery against a lot of hits

Belt

• +# to Strength, +# to all Attributes and other attributes you may need
• +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
• +# to Maximum Life

Jewels

Generic % damage increases on the passive tree are fairly rare. Jewels are a great way to alleviate that problem by having multiple damage stats on them at once, granting a large boost in damage.

This build allocates at least 5 Jewel sockets which provide an excellent way to further customize your build. Specifically look out for the following stats on them in rough order of importance:

• #% increased Damage with Warcries
• #% increased Global Physical Damage
• #% increased Warcry Speed
• #% increased Armour
• #% increased Block Chance - if your chance to block is not at 75% yet
• #% increased Area of Effect - generic AoE is an extremely scarce stat otherwise. This increases the coverage of your Seismic Cry, the corpse explosion from Warcaller's Bellow as well as Ancestral Warrior Totems Earthshatters
• +#% to Maximum Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistances
• #% increased Totem Life/Damage/Placement Speed
• #% increased Weapon Swap Speed (QoL)
• #% increased Damage against Enemies with Fully Broken Armour - mainly good for single target damage output
• #% increased Knockback distance - Cause Seismic Cry to knock mobs even further away
• Recover #% of Life on Kill
• Gain # Rage when hit by an enemy
• #% increased Stun Buildup

Any of these mods are also good on a Time-Lost Jewel that affects a lot of nodes in the vicinity.

My totems barely deal any damage. Why?

Totem damage is heavily reliant on +# to Gem Levels. Make sure that you have your Weapon Swap Tree setup properly and that the weapon it swaps to when you place a Totem has +# to Melee Gem Levels.

My HP goes down a lot whenever I use Seismic Cry. Why?

There's a few things that contribute to staying healthy while casting roughly 4 Warcries per second. Make sure you have the following sources of recovery:

• Urgent Call
• A high level Life Flask
• Gain # Life per Enemy Killed by socketing Rebirth Rune into your Weapon or having it roll as a mod on it.

A lower level Seismic Cry costs less life to use. The trade-off is less stun buildup on mobs but potentially very worthwhile to fix life costs.

Seismic Cry costs too much mana! Why?

Make sure to allocate Blood Magic. This allows you to pay for Seismic Cry's costs with your life instead of mana. It also means you don't need a Mana Flask at all.

What permanent stats should I pick from the Venom Crypts quest?

For Act 3 pick 30% increased Elemental Ailment Threshold.

For Act 3 Cruel you may pick between +10% to Chaos Resistance or 15% reduced Slowing Potency of Debuffs on you. Once again both are solid options with the Chaos Resistance making initial gearing easier with the Slowing Potency potentially being better on a min-maxed Character. I recommend picking Chaos Resistance for now.

Here's a quick breakdown of the build and a gameplay showcase by Steelmage:

Congratulations on finishing the Corrupting Cry Warbringer Endgame Guide! For feedback and potential questions head over to our Discord and select the Path of Exile 2 role in #roles.

Credits

Skadoosh_C

Steelmage