Path of Exile: Ultimatum is the upcoming new League for PoE, and it is going to shake things up for the game quite a lot. The League looks interesting and fun, with the Trial Master offering players an Ultimatum each time they successfully complete an encounter. If they accept, the encounter ends and the player is awarded the item offered. Otherwise, the item is changed to a better one at the cost of the players having to survive yet another encounter.

Ultimatum also introduces new Skill Gems and old, popular ones are in most cases seeing a nerf to their performance. Given that Ultimatum is a Vaal League, it was only natural that GGG added new skills to fit the theme. These skills require a blood sacrifice, and they are all linked to blood and Life, with changes to the popular Low Life mechanic for spell-based builds.

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Exsanguinate is a promising new skill added alongside Ultimatum, and it is a Physical spell that deals high amounts of Physical damage and applies a Physical damage over time debuff (not bleed). The spell is cast in a narrow cone and can target several targets at once, making it good for both clearing and single-target DPS. It is likely that it's going to work very well with Petrified Blood (another new, blood-themed skill) to take advantage of playing a Low Life character and deal even more damage thanks to Pain Attunement.

Given the nature of the damage over time applied by Exsanguinate stacking up to three times, the skill could see some Unleash action. Unleash is a Support Gem that stores charges the longer the players don't cast the supported skills, and then a single cast is repeated a number of times equal to the charges spent this way. As such, another good option could be pairing Exsanguinate with mines, and playing the build as if it were a regular Glacial Cascade Saboteur.

Otherwise, the DoT debuff can simply be scaled with other supports, nodes, items, and classes granting extra damage over time multiplier. The best option here would be the Trickster Ascendancy class, with the Gladiator and the Ascendant also being nice choices, as they all scale DoT and some nice defensive bonuses. Another option to further increase the damage over time from this build would be to use another new gem, in the form of Corrupted Fever. This spell consumes the player's Life but adds the Corrupting Blood damage over time to hits dealt. Corrupting Blood, much like Exsanguinate's debuff and bleed, does scale with damage over time multiplier.

As for defenses, a great way to stay safe in Ultimatum—which is a League with a heavy theme of risking items and loot by facing increasingly difficult encounters—would be to go the block route. Block was never really popular up until two big changes were made: first, the Glancing Blows Keystone was added via Timeless Jewels from Legion (and, subsequently, directly on the passive skill tree); second, affixes granting a percentage of the players' Life, Mana, and Energy Shield were added to the mod pool of shields.

Glancing Blows is a phenomenal Keystone that doubles one's Chance to Block Attacks and Spells at the cost of taking 65% of the damage coming from all blocked hits. The mods that make gamers recover a small percentage of Life, Mana, or Energy Shield when they block is also a great fit with block-based builds, regardless if they use Glancing Blows or not. With this in mind, builds revolving around one or more of these elements are likely to succeed in Ultimatum, because the clear speed for Exsanguinate sounds very promising, and the single-target damage can be good too.

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Reap is not too far off in terms of concept when compared to Exsanguinate. It is, again, a Physical spell stacking a damage over time debuff. Once again, like all the new blood-themed skills, Reap too does have a Life cost to pay instead of the usual Mana cost for spells and attacks.

Because of this, some players have already come up with a solution that allows them to bypass the Life cost entirely, and that is to use the skill on a Spellslinger link. Spellslinger is a Support Gem that allows players to link a spell to it and have it cast while attacking with a wand, and this makes the associated skills go off without paying their cost. The issue here is that Spellslinger reserves Mana, so reduced Mana reservation nodes might be needed. The silver lining is that Spellslinger is not limited to a single setup, which means that players can use even more skills by triggering them this way. The Ascendant is a good fit here.

However, a great benefit of Reap is that if it doesn't kill enemies with the secondary DoT debuff, then the skill gains a Blood Charge and it deals more damage (which, "more" in Path of Exile is a sort of final damage multiplier that comes into play after all other sources of "increased" damage). The charges can stack up to 5 but they are lost whenever an enemy dies while affected by the DoT. This means that a good way to have them up at all times would be to pair the skill with Avatar of Fire. Avatar of Fire is a Keystone that makes players unable to deal damage that is not Fire damage, while also converting 50% of all other damage sources into Fire. Playing Reap with this combination would result in the skill never losing any charge.

As for the defensive boons, Reap can be paired with Physical damage leeched as Life, Life Regeneration, Life Flasks, or even the same block combo discussed above in the Exsanguinate section. Being it an area skill, it is going to work well in terms of clearing, and it can scale even better against bosses thanks to Intensify Support. Even better if it is used with the Assassin and his awesome single-target DPS.

Exsanguinate and Reap are simply two new spells that fit the Ultimatum and Vaal theme of sacrifice and paying greatness with blood. However, there are plenty of other builds that could be played, especially with the changes coming to Path of Exile with the 3.14 patch.

Among these, one of the highlights is the new modifier that Bladestorm gained. The skill, an area attack that creates a bladestorm of sand or blood, got a new line that makes it deal a lot more damage with Bleeding while in Blood Stance. This makes it an amazing option for Gladiators, Slayers, Berserkers, and even Tricksters.

Most of the skills that always were among the ones people used the most have been nerfed, and as such there are not many winners in the 3.14 patch notes. A few Vaal skills have been buffed, and new Vaal items might make them even more viable than before. Among these, there are some major ones, like Vaal Cold Snap, Vaal Earthquake, Vaal Ground Slam, and Vaal Power Siphon.

Path of Exile: Ultimatum is available on now for PC and April 21st for consoles.

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