While a lot of viewers have said that they're most excited POE Currency about Original Sin, for some players Eternal damnation is the biggest piece of news with Sanctum coming back. This little amulet doesn't make you invincible but it makes you very close to it. It provides you with elemental damage reduction which is a stat you can't otherwise get in the game, and this gives you a tremendous additional defensive layer that stacks multiplicatively with your resistances. For example, if you have just the basics with eternal damnation, you'll have 70% Fire Resistance and 70% Chaos resistance, this chaos resistance will then give you a 35% damage reduction against fire which ultimately will be equivalent to having 80.5% fire resistance, this is both solid and unspectacular at the same time. Eternal Damnation becomes meaningfully better if you have increases to maximum resistances on other pieces of equipment, for example, you could have a rare shield that has 2% to all Maximum resistances and a further 2% to maximum chaos resistance, and that will make Eternal damnation even better.
But where it truly becomes a Powerhouse is when you use it in conjunction with Loreweave - Loreweave overwrites your maximum resistances and this is fire cold lightning and Chaos all at once to 78%, this completely erases the drawback on Eternal damnation and as a result, is extremely good. You then have the option of doubling down on Loreweave's ability to completely allow you to ignore penalties to your maximum resistance. By allocating the special Keystone exclusive to militant Faith Timeless Jewels - Transcendence, Transcendence will then provide you with tremendous defense against all of the elemental damage you suffer, but you'll then need to find alternate solutions to all of the incoming physical damage. Eternal Damnation can be the highest impact of the returning uniques from the Sanctum content, it is extremely powerful defensively and it is something that changes the way you build defenses, and it does so while remaining extremely strong.
2. Original Sin (Unique Amethyst Ring)
You'll notice we're not even leaving this one to last that is how impactful the Sanctum uniques are. Original Sin is a completely Chase item, this is the item that you get as a reward for doing a no-hit Sanctum in conjunction with the unique Relic that allows you to attempt a no-hit sanctum. No-hit Sanctums are likely to be harder in this league and it wouldn't surprise us if the no-hit sanctum Relic is considerably rarer as well. So this is going to be a big deal as this is not going to be an easy item to source and is going to be expensive.
It converts all Elemental damage your character does to chaos and it overwrites the chaos resistance of all nearby enemies to a flat zero. This item has several scenarios in which it is incredibly strong, it is absolutely amazing in conjunction with Replica Alberon's Warpath that's one of the best uses for it. it can also be used if you're just doing a lot of different Elemental damage, and you want to make all of that damage into chaos and then inflict poison with all of it that's another good use for Original Sin. One of the most straightforward uses of it is as a way to get around the monsters that have been added to the game, especially from 3.18 onwards, where a small percentage of monsters that you fight have tremendously high resistances - this is most obvious when you're fighting monster that have been augmented by Alters that increase their resistances. There are Eldritch multi-mods that will give the map POE Items boss of that map 160 increased resistance to Fire and Chaos or if you're on the aid of world side to cold and lightning, this can be an overwhelming amount of resistance and all Original Sin comes along and gives 235% fire resistance and Chaos resistance. That's why this item is so strong and it wouldn't surprise us if it ends up being extraordinarily expensive in 3.22 and very hard to get your hands upon.
3. The Balance Of Terror (Unique Cobalt Jewel)
This unique is a quiet achiever that fits on a lot of builds. If you cast a curse at least once every 10 seconds, the balance of Terror is something that could be very good for you. This is a jewel that has a welcome amount of resistance and then depending on where you get it it will either have two or three modifiers that provide a set bonus if you have cast a specific curse in the last 10 seconds.
Now these mods vary quite a bit, for example, unaffected by freeze if you've cast frostbite in the last 10 seconds is very marginal, but getting 30% to 40% of physical damage added as extra damage of a random element if you've cast Elemental weakness in the last 10 seconds. That's very impactful and particularly impactful is the one that causes your hits to inflict weather if you have cast despair in the last 10 seconds. The Balance Of Terror is a really strong item, both the two-mod and the three-mod versions can be good and one that rolls two mods that are related to the same curse is going to be extraordinarily good. So keep an eye out for those, but even The Balance Of Terror that doesn't do that can still be a decent item and this is something to consider fitting into a lot of different builds.
4. Sandstorm Visage (Unique Necromancer Circlet)
Sandstorm Visage is another item that interacts with critical strikes in an interesting and unique way. Firstly it has text that prevents it from being used in conjunction with casts on Critical Strike, cannot deal critical strikes with attacks, so no use of Sandstorm Visage on cast on crit builds. In exchange for that drawback, this item overwrites the base Critical Strike chance on any spell that you might be using, by the Critical Strike chance of your main-handed weapon.
For example, if you are using Hexblast as your skill, Hexblast has a base Critical Strike chance of 4%. But in conjunction with void battery and Sandstorm Visage, the base Critical Strike chance is overwritten by the 8% that is on void battery, and this ends up being a 100 more multiplier to your Critical Strike chance because you've increased the base from 4% to 8% - that means that your power charges are now providing effectively twice as much of a chance to crit and so are all of the effects on your gear including void battery's explicit mod 50% to 65% increased Global Critical Strike chance. What it allows you to do is invest less in getting Critical Strike chance capped and therefore be able to invest more in other things on your character, that's this item's strength and that's why it's so good.
5. The Winds Of Fate (Unique Foul Staff)
the Winds Of Fate was one of the rarest of these unique in patch 3.20, although we don't know if that will continue to be the case in patch 3.22. The Winds Of Fate is a really weird item, it has a tremendous drawback on it - your maximum Critical Strike chance is 50% and your non-critical strikes deal no damage, this means that if you can't overcome this if you can't bypass this drawback somehow, then you're going to wind up in a situation where sometimes you're going to make three attacks in a row, all of them are going to be non-crits just because you get unlucky and you end up doing absolutely no damage with them. And that is a very dangerous spot to be in Path of Exile at the moment. However, there are plenty of shenanigans that you can play, the most common way that this item was used was in conjunction with Plume of Pursuit. Plum Pursuit is not a sanctum item, this is something from Harvest, it is a reasonably common drop from the very rare boss Janaar, the Omen. But when you do find Janaar, the Omen, you've got a reasonably good chance of getting plume of a shoot from it. Now this helmet causes any spell skill that repeats - spells that are used in conjunction with Spell echo, they cannot deal Critical Strikes except on their final cast, but their final repeat always crits which has more than a little Synergy with Marilyn's fallacy.
And something that's interesting and may not be immediately obvious, when you look at The Winds Of Fate is that an always crit effect actually overrules that maximum Critical Strike chance being 50%, so that is one of the ways that The Winds Of Fate's drawbacks are overcome. Once you manage to overcome the drawbacks, you have a tremendous amount of physical damage for a weapon. Now how does a very large amount of weapon damage help you when you're casting spells and repeating them and using Plume of Pursuit? It doesn't do much on its own but we are sure that coming battle mage can find a good way to put this combination to use. Once you've got battle mage on your character, you have a tremendous amount of flat physical damage that you can add to any spells you want and you also have a lot of additional Critical Strike multiplier. The Winds of Fate is a real build around puzzle, you've still got to deal with the tremendous amount of conversions that it's putting you through you've got to find a way to scale damage that still works after all of those conversion effects. But it is a worthwhile puzzle to solve and there's some powerful builds around this quite rare item.
