Cyclone

The damage engine is a General's Cry mirage-warrior loop — the character channels Cyclone which triggers Void Shockwave Support via Cast while Channelling Support, while General's Cry warcries summon mirage copies of the caster that each instantly cast Lacerate of Butchering. Foulborn Uul-Netol's Kiss Vaal Axe is the weapon that makes this work — 243% increased physical damage, the base mod curse enemies with Vulnerability on hit, exerted attacks knock enemies back, and the Foulborn-corruption line 500% increased warcry cooldown recovery rate. That CDR multiplier shreds General's Cry's 8-second base cooldown down to effectively 1.3 seconds, so mirage warriors spawn in near-constant rotation. Each mirage attack inherits your character's critical strike chance, modifier, and weapon rolls — combined with Marylene's Fallacy on the neck (+280% global crit multi / -48% less crit chance), the warriors crit for 4.4x multi on every hit.

The 6-link body armour (The Fourth Vow, Devout Chainmail) runs Lacerate of Butchering + General's Cry + Melee Physical Damage Support + Brutality Support + Pulverise Support + Autoexertion Support. Autoexertion Support is the warcry-support that automates the General's Cry rotation — every 6 seconds or so it fires the socketed warcry for free without manual button-press. Brutality Support gives +59% more physical damage at the cost of removing elemental and chaos damage entirely — perfect for a build that converts to pure physical. The helmet runs a 3-aura stack (Determination + Pride + Flesh and Stone) with Enlighten Support for reservation efficiency. Screams of the Desiccated belt grants Diamond Shrine buff while affected by no flasks (permanent +200% crit multi effectively) thanks to Mageblood-less flask economy.

The tree commits hard to physical / melee / warcry scaling — Master of the Arena, Spirit of War, Destroyer, The Unseen Hand for warcry scaling, Golem's Blood + Bloodless for life. The Champion ascendancy takes Inspirational (banner effect), Worthy Causes (banner reservation + bonuses), and Worthy Foe (10% increased damage taken by marked target / cannot evade).

EHP 33k at the reference L84. 60% physical damage reduction from 17k armour + Determination. The defensive identity is already clear: The Fourth Vow's armour also applies to chaos damage taken from hits converts the normally-hard-to-mitigate chaos hits into armour-eaten damage. The Formless Flame helmet grants -150 Fire damage taken from hits (a massive flat reduction) and armour is increased by overcapped fire resistance, which scales with +7% fire overcap at this tier. Divine Flesh (transformed from Pain Attunement via Glorious Vanity bathed in Xibaqua's blood) makes you take 50% of elemental damage as chaos, which combined with 80% chaos resist and the Fourth Vow armour-applies-to-chaos clause means elemental hits become chaos-via-armour — a defensive loop that layers on top of the resist wall. Unwavering Stance grants stun immunity (essential for a channelled movement-skill rotation), and Versatile Combatant converts attack block to spell block at 50%. Life sits at 3639 — low, but the Fourth Vow-armour-chaos loop covers the exposure.

Deliberate, thumping, methodical. The rotation is walk into pack with Cyclone, Autoexertion Support fires General's Cry automatically, mirage warriors spawn and all attack simultaneously with Lacerate of Butchering, the screen explodes. The Writhing Jar flasks (three of them here at early mapping) summon Writhing Worms that act as sacrificial targets for Desecrate-corpse-based mechanics and boss rotation — a quirky early-mapping detail. Bossing is stand-on-top and let the warcry cadence run — the mirage fleet is the DPS, not the channeled cyclone.

DPS explodes to 43M at 100% crit chance with 4.74x multi — a 13x jump over early mapping driven almost entirely by the Foulborn Uul-Netol's Kiss tier scaling and the triple-banner stack. The three banners each contribute a different multiplier: Defiance Banner (+armour, -enemy accuracy), War Banner (+accuracy, +phys damage vs marked), Dread Banner (+impale chance / +impale effect). Watcher's Eye at endgame grants +57% phys damage while using Pride and impales last 2 additional hits while using Pride — the impale-extension is the largest single-target multiplier in the build, because each Lacerate of Butchering hit stacks impale, and the extra hits from the Watcher's Eye mod turn 5 impales into 7 impales with huge compounding damage.

Iron Reflexes (converts all evasion to armour) is the armour breakpoint — combined with 37.7k armour from tree + The Fourth Vow + The Formless Flame's fire-overcap-to-armour scaling (+184% fire overcap at this tier), physical damage reduction hits 87%. Champion of the Cause is added on the tree for +50% mana reservation efficiency scaling, enabling the quadruple-aura stack. Cluster jewels lean into Devastator + Martial Prowess + Vicious Skewering (large cluster) and Lead By Example + Mob Mentality (medium cluster) for banner/warcry scaling.

EHP 51k. 87% physical damage reduction is the main story — 37.7k armour + Determination + The Fourth Vow's 374% armour (well, its armour-and-ES implicit scaling) + Iron Reflexes converting evasion. 92% spell suppression is fully capped. Resistances cap at 77-80% with +184% fire / +184% cold / +170% lightning overcap — the fire overcap feeds The Formless Flame's armour scaling for a compounding defence. Divine Flesh + 80% chaos res + The Fourth Vow's armour-applies-to-chaos means the 50% of elemental taken as chaos damage is cheap to tank. Unwavering Stance + Versatile Combatant persist.

The build hits its groove. Phase Run + Automation Support means you auto-stealth while moving between packs for free crit scaling. Autoexertion Support fires General's Cry automatically on cooldown, mirage warriors spawn continuously, and the triple-banner stack means every hit has maximum impale + damage + accuracy scaling. Eagle Dash boots drop Brittle Ground while moving — adds +crit chance against brittle enemies, a small but consistent layer. The playstyle is melee armour-stacker power fantasy: walk forward, warcry, pack dies, repeat.

DPS settles at 13.6M at 100% crit chance with 5.78x multi — the crit multi jump from 4.74 → 5.78 at aspirational is where most of the tier's damage growth sits, driven by Marylene's Fallacy's +345% crit multi roll plus rare ring/ring crit-multi rolls. Note that the reference character's DPS is LOWER than the endgame reference — this is because the aspirational character is a pure tank variant (the balanced-score is weighted toward EHP) rather than a pure DPS variant. The tier median DPS is 1.3M but the reference character hits 13.6M, so the variant's actual ceiling is higher than the reference displays.

The 6-link body armour (The Fourth Vow with +2 socketed AoE gems + +2 socketed minion gems) runs Lacerate of Butchering + General's Cry + Autoexertion Support + Pulverise Support + Melee Physical Damage Support + Brutality Support — the canonical aspirational setup. Sibyl's Lament on ring 2 grants 100% physical hit damage from you cannot be reflected — the reflect-immunity is essential for an armour stacker that otherwise one-shots itself against phys-reflect rares. Sol Band Fugitive Ring on slot 1 grants +2% max chaos resist / 15% damage recouped as life / +25% crit multi — the defensive-offensive hybrid that defines the Champion aspirational ring slot.

EHP 14k on paper for this specific reference (the character was captured mid-transition with resistances not fully capped — -9% cold resist and 39% fire resist indicates an unfinished gear swap), but the tier median sits at 64k EHP. At the true aspirational ceiling: 79% physical damage reduction still from 43k armour, 75/75/75 elemental capped via Melding of the Flesh-style shared-cap scaling (not on this specific build, but the tier's 93% chaos res coverage + Divine Flesh routing makes resists less critical than on other variants). 82% chaos resist sustained. The Fourth Vow's chaos-to-armour + Divine Flesh + Sibyl's Lament reflect immunity form the full defensive loop. Horticultural Fulgurite Tincture flask adds 36% chance to shock with melee + 48% increased shock effect + 47% melee crit multi during effect — the tincture-flask-slot variant of the usual boss-phase crit flask.

The endgame Champion power fantasy. Phase Run + Automation Support provides permanent stealth-on-move, Autoexertion Support cycles General's Cry on cooldown, the triple-banner stack is permanently active, and the mirage warriors clear the screen in front of you while you walk behind. Foulborn Uul-Netol's Kiss's 605% warcry CDR means the General's Cry cooldown is effectively sub-1-second, so mirage waves chain continuously. Pinnacle bossing uses the four Writhing Jar flasks to summon sacrificial worms for Desecrate-based boss rotations (Sirus, Maven). The build is the meta Champion at its most refined — tank, walk, warcry, win.