The newly added tattoos in Path of Exile 3.22 Trial of the Ancestors league offer many new build options. Transcendence is one such option.
Typical use of this type of keystone in the past has been almost entirely limited to Loreweave, to address the maximum resistance penalty imposed on a character. But tattoos, when combined with Chieftain’s Valako notable or Melding of the Flesh unique jewel, can solve this problem to a great extent.
With these new Maximum Resistance Tattoos, even if you’re on a lower POE Currency budget, you can rely on something like Lightning Coil to help address another of Transcendence Keystone’s shortcomings. This makes the build of gear Transcendence even more powerful. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Transcendence
This Keystone provides a very strong defensive advantage. But it has two tremendous disadvantages, which is why it’s not used very often. Because of its shortcomings, it is difficult to solve the problems that occurred.
First, it causes your armor to no longer reduce the physical damage you take, but applies to elemental damage. And then there’s the huge elemental max resistance penalty. These are the problems you have to overcome.
Traditional Loreweave Approach
We commonly used it with Loreweave. Because Loreweave has a hard cap or maximum resistance that overcomes this Keystone shortcoming.
But the thing is, you then need to use your body armor slots. This makes your body armor unable to resist more physical damage, and you need very good POE items to deal with physical damage.
Tattoos
But don’t worry. In POE 3.22, we have tattoos, and tattoos are powerful. Among them, Tattoo of the Ngamahu Makanga gives you +1 to your maximum fire resistance. There are other tattoos for cold and lightning that are also very useful.
Also, there is a unique jewel, Warrior’s Tale, which doubles the effect of all tattoos within a medium radius. So this constitutes a powerful option in POE 3.22.
Therefore, you can use Transcendence without using Loreweave. This is great for Chieftain since he has Valako notable. But this also has benefits for other classes, which we’ll discuss later with a Melding of the Flesh.
Chieftain Use Case
Let’s focus on Chieftain first. Because Tattoo of the Ngamahu Makanga increases maximum fire resistance by +1. If we look at the dual socket on the tree, next to it is Unwavering Stance. You can get a maximum fire resistance of +4 here.
If you use these four nodes and insert gems into them, you will gain +8 maximum fire resistance. You can get other dual effects for these tattoos by utilizing the remaining two strength nodes and a Stacked Deck and a node within that radius.
This setup, along with the nodes taken, gives Chieftain +13 maximum elemental resistance. And that’s not even taking into account Purity of Fire. So with Purity of Fire and some halo effect scaling. You’ll be looking at around 80 points of max elemental resistance or more, regardless of any gear.
This means equipping Transcendence becomes much easier. Since you no longer need Loreweave, you can use Lightning Coil to help you deal with physical damage.
And since the shield gauge is also free, you can use Dawnbreaker, which already gives you a whopping 70 elemental damage. And there are many options for dealing with physical damage.
Melding Of The Flesh
But the thing is, this isn’t entirely limited to Chieftain. Because if you add Melding of the Flesh to another class, you have another minus four maximum elemental resistance to deal with.
But it is still easy to solve through tattooing. You can prioritize maximum cold tolerance. For example, Tattoo of the Arohongui Makanga increases cold resistance by +1. There are also things like Brine Crown, which adds three maximum cold resistances. You can then use your shield slot for maximum resistance. You can also use Aegis Aurora, which is five times more cold resistant.
There are a lot of options in the passive tree, and you can find a good place to set up your Warrior’s Tale to get more max resistance with these tattoos.
Final Thoughts
Overall, it’s kind of baffling because Transcendence is such a powerful keystone. It can be used to create some of the tankiest builds in the game. It’s just that it’s always been severely limited by his massive shortcomings.
But with these tattoos, it’s actually much easier to solve these problems in this POE 3.22 league. You can use this to your advantage to create a very tanky character. I’d like to see some people tank some ridiculous boss abilities with this setup. See you next time!
