S-TIER | BUILD SORCIÈRE BONE CAGE BLOOD MAGE (@GameyMcJamesFace) | SAISON 4

Build Video

Build Overview

What if your entire gameplay came down to a single button? That’s exactly the promise of this Blood Mage build: press one key, clear the entire screen, and stay comfortably tanky. After struggling with finicky spell combos (Fireball, Spark, Flame Bomb) that fall apart the moment the rotation doesn’t click, the creator finally landed on the solution: spamming Bone Cage on loop.

Originally, GGG designed Bone Cage as a utility skill: you place a ring of spikes on the ground, it lasts a few seconds, and enemies who walk into it get pinned. Except that by pairing it with Spell Cascade, the spell « shotguns » — it fires three cages simultaneously, resulting in up to six overlapping hits on the same target. Since we’re playing Blood Mage, we stack massive crits, and the skill’s damage base literally explodes.

The real fireworks come from the unique boots Trampletoe: they convert overkill damage (the surplus dealt beyond a monster’s life) into a physical explosion. This explosion scales with area of effect and, with enough surplus, chains from itself — hence the entire screen going up in smoke. Add to that the brand-new lineage support Atalui’s Bloodletting and the abyss jewel Unending Hate (a tribute to Tecrod), and you get a build as braindead to play as it is devastating, capable of making Simulacrum, Abyss, Breaches, and Rituals trivial.

Strengths / Weaknesses

Skill Gem Setup by Step

This build offers 1 progression step from leveling to the final build. Select a step to view the corresponding skill gem setup.

Endgame

Endgame

7 skills • 23 gemmes

Reliquats de VieLife Remnants

ConsécrationConsecrate

Cage d'ossementsBone Cage

BlasphèmeBlasphemy

Reliquats de VieLife Remnants

ConsécrationConsecrate

Projection de sortilègesSpellslinger

Recommended Equipment

The general philosophy: stack life, Energy Shield, cap resistances, and sprinkle rarity everywhere you can. On prefixes, you’re mainly looking for (physical) spell damage and cast speed.

• Boots — Trampletoe (unique): the item that defines the build. A version with one socket is enough; ideally corrupted with a higher overkill multiplier (the creator paid ~25× the base price for a good roll).
• Wand: +5 to spell skills (cheap since few players run physical spells), cast speed, critical hit chance, and physical spell damage.
• Off-hand: +all spell skills, critical hit chance, cast speed, physical spell damage, and ideally a solid Energy Shield roll.
• Helmet: Energy Shield, maximum life, rarity, critical hit chance, and one resistance. Corrupted version with 2 sockets for area of effect. If you’re just starting out: prioritize ~40% rarity (prefix + suffix), very cost-efficient.
• Amulet: +to spells, critical hit chance, life. Anoint Cut to Bone so your crits trigger Armor Break.
• Rings: the PoB equips the unique ring Seed of Cataclysm (spell critical hit chance + spell critical damage bonus + chaos resistance), ideal for pushing Crit toward 100%. On the second ring, a rare to cap resistances, with rarity and preferably more critical hit chance.
• Body armour: maximum life + high Energy Shield + at least one resistance.
• Belt: triple resistance — often the most expensive piece in the set.
• Gloves: life, Energy Shield, resistances, and a bit of rarity (23% on the creator’s version).

Gameplay Tips

• Prime the ramp-up: when entering a pack, cast once to fill up, then chain casts — life regeneration flows much more smoothly after that.
• Pre-place the cage on spawn sources (Abyss, Breach): monsters die instantly as they emerge.
• Aim for 100% crit: prioritize critical strike chance (only 10% per passive tree node, so focus on gear) then crit multiplier (easy to stack on the tree).
• Armor Break: essential. Either via the Cut to Bone anoint (expensive), three passive tree nodes, or an Armor Break support early on.
• Before the Tecrod jewel: take nodes that convert mana cost to life cost (half conversion with three nodes), and 2–4% life gained on kill on your jewels.
• Flat damage > crit multi on gear: flat damage is rare on the tree, crit multiplier is everywhere.

The Bone Cage + Trampletoe Combo: Clearing the Whole Screen

The entire build revolves around a simple but explosive interaction. Bone Cage, combined with Spell Cascade, fires three overlapping cages: an enemy walking through all of them takes up to six instances of damage (the famous « shotgun »). Since we’re playing Blood Mage with crit pushed to the maximum, each overlap hits extremely hard.

That’s where the Trampletoe boots come in. They have a baseline 2-meter explosion on kill, whose damage scales with overkill — the excess damage dealt beyond the monster’s health. In practice: if a monster has 10,000 HP and you deal 400,000 damage, the overkill of 390,000 is multiplied by 30% (34% with corrupted boots), creating a ~120,000 pulse that kills nearby enemies. And since this explosion scales with generic area of effect, the creator has pushed it to a 2.6 million radius: at that point, a single death triggers a chain reaction that wipes the entire screen. This is also what allows you to instantly kill rares inside large packs.

Atalui’s Bloodletting: The Cornerstone of Damage

The new support lineage Atalui’s Bloodletting is the element that takes the build into a completely different dimension. It grants 2% additional physical damage per life point spent, converts all your mana cost to life cost, and applies a 1.5 cost multiplier.

While most supports cap at 25–30% « more » with a downside attached, this one has no drawback whatsoever. With a cost around 1,300, that’s 260% additional physical damage. Combined with the jewel that further increases the life cost, the creator finds that these two small pieces alone multiply damage by nearly 4. It is the build’s primary source of power.

Sustain and Near-Immortality: The Unending Hate Jewel

Such a high life cost raises an obvious question: how do you survive? The answer comes from the new abyss jewel Unending Hate (the equivalent of timeless jewels from PoE1), used alongside the Tecrod tribute. The latter provides 50% increased life cost — which further scales damage — but more importantly 1% life regeneration per life point spent, spread over 8 seconds.

Cast a spell costing 1,300 life, and you regenerate 1,300 HP over 8 seconds. By stacking life regeneration and casting frequently, you easily surpass 3,000 HP/s. And the detail that makes the build absurd: a keystone causes excess life regeneration to overflow into your Energy Shield. With a large ES pool and sufficient regeneration investment, you refill both life and shield in two seconds — virtually immortal as long as you aren’t one-shot.

Blood Mage Ascendancy and Passive Tree: All In on Crit

The Blood Mage ascendancy brings a very strong node that spreads damage taken over 4 seconds (somewhat like a PoE1 flask, but passive), significantly increasing your ability to withstand burst damage. Another node lets you draw a large amount of life from your chest piece.

On the passive tree, the goal is clear: push crit toward 100%. Critical strike chance is prioritized (rare and costly on the tree at only 10% per node) while picking up crit multiplier along the way. Since life regeneration is sparse on the tree, you grab the few dedicated nodes available, along with mana-to-life conversion while waiting for the Tecrod combo. Worth noting: some nodes are currently bugged (15% base crit already included on bone skills, another node with no effect) — the creator takes the aggravated bleeding nodes instead.

Early Game Setup: The Bone Storm Combo

Before having enough damage to one-shot packs, the one-button playstyle isn’t fully online yet. In the meantime, use the Bone Storm + Bone Cage combo. Bone Storm channels (up to 20 projectiles) but takes a while; add a support that fires three projectiles at once to reduce the channeling time, or a channeling support with 40% « more ». Brutality I is a solid support choice at this stage. You switch to pure Bone Cage spamming once your damage is sufficient.

Skill Tree