We’re less than two weeks away from the official release of Path of Exile 3.22 Trail of the Ancestors. Instead of waiting, you might as well use this time to gain in-depth knowledge of the game.
In my opinion, unique POE Currency are not as powerful as high-level rare items, but they can have a crucial impact on the gameplay and character builds.
So, here, I’m going to feature a specific unique item where I will take a closer look at what makes it special, how it works, noteworthy interactions, and more.
Overview
This unique item is called The Eternity Shroud Blood Raiment.
The Eternity Shroud is an endgame body armor that offers an incredible amount of power and utility if built around it. This unique is well known for its high DPS output capabilities with its “gain Elemental Damage as extra Chaos Damage” modifier and how it interacts with multiple damage conversions, which allows it to benefit from this mod repeatedly.
It also comes with a very unique utility skill Glimpse of Eternity that creates a powerful AOE slow effect when hit. When this effect is stacked on top of other slow mechanics, it can bring an enemy’s movement down to a crawl and easily allow to outmaneuver and outplay the opponent.
Even though this AOE slow is quite strong, it is rarely seen that a character optimizes around it. During early league days, it’s not uncommon to see some of the highest DPS characters on the ladder building around this item.
At some point in time, The Eternity Shroud was one of the most sought after POE Orbs in all of raycast and to this day many secrets devastating powers.
Modifier 1 – Glimpse Of Eternity
This unique comes with three special modifiers.
The first mod grants the special trigger skill, Glimpse of Eternity. When hit, it creates a stationary AOE effect around the caster that slows down time for enemies caught within it. The Eternity Sphere has a base duration of 10 seconds, a 5 second cooldown, a base radius of 22 units, and an initial slow of 40%.
The slow effect applied is an Action Speed reduction and affects any action the enemy performs that has an animation part to it, be it attacking, casting a spell, recovering from a stunning hit, or moving.
This modifier works as a multiplier to animation speed and can affect it in a positive or in a negative way. Since the slow effect is after time reduction, it can stack additively with other source of Action Speed reduction, like for example from Chilled, which can reduce the Action Speed by another 30% for a total of 70% initially.
This slow effect loses its Effectiveness linear over time and will have lost all of its Effectiveness by the end of the Sphere’s duration.
The Glimpse of Eternity skill can also be affected by support gems as circuited into The Eternity Shroud if they have matching tags, most notably our support gems that come with attacks, duration, or area.
Modifier 2 – Gain Elemental Damage As Extra Chaos Damage
The next unique modifier can increase damage output massively – “gain (3-5)% of Elemental Damage as extra Chaos Damage per Shaper Item equipped”.
With up to 10 shaper influenced items equipped, The Eternity Shroud itself included a character gains up to 50% of Elemental Damage as extra Chaos Damage. This mod is not just a global modifier that takes all Elemental Damage at once into account, but, instead, is applied for every single element separately, even if one element is converted into another.
If let’s say all of the Ice Nova skill’s Cold Damage is converted into Fire Damage and then 50% of Elemental Damage is then gained as extra Chaos Damage, the Ice Nola would gain 50% extra Chaos Damage from its former pure Cold Damage and then another 50% extra Chaos Damage from its now pure Fire Damage.
The conversion chain can even be further extended if the starting element is Lightning that gets converted into Cold and lastly into Fire. That way, it’s possible to benefit from this mod up to three times.
Other gain modifiers, such as “gain x% of Cold Damage as extra Fire Damage” will take effect before this mod is applied, making it even stronger.
Modifier 3 – Ignore Chaos Resistance
For the last unique modifier on this item, it is possible to completely ignore the enemy’s Chaos Resistance if all equipped items have Shaper influence. If this mod is in effect, the enemy’s Chaos Resistance will be treated as if it was zero. Lowering the enemy’s Chaos Resistance or penetrating it will have no effect on the Chaos Damage dealt.
It is worth mentioning that for some builds or group setups that can easily reduce the enemy’s Chaos Resistance to below zero. It can be an advantage to skip out on this mod and have at least one item without Shaper influence equipped.
Interactions
The Eternity Sphere cannot only be triggered by enemy hits but also by self-inflicted hit damage from skills and items, which allows for proactive use of its slow effect.
Having Triggerbots from the Saboteur ascendancy allocated will cause two Eternity Spheres to spawn at the Triggerbots locations for even better area coverage.
As mentioned before, the Action Speed reduction applied by the Eternity Sphere is additive and stacks with other sources of Action Speed reduction, like Chill.
Now, if the Shaper of Winter notable from the Elementalist ascendancy is allocated, Chills can slow enemies by up to 40% instead. If on top of that, Maddening Presence from the Impresence Onyx Amulet is active, which reduces Action Speed by another 10% for a total of 90% Action Speed reduction.
An affected enemy is barely able to move it all, not to mention that an enemy could still be cursed with temporal chains for even less Action Speed.
Pinnacle bosses, like The Elder, The Shaper or The Searing Exarch, cannot be fully slowed, which means their minimum Action Speed is kept at 70% of base value. Even while frozen, they can still move at this cap.
The Action Speed of endgame bosses might be kept at a minimum. Their movement speed is not and can be further reduced by debuffs, like Maimed and Hinder.
Conclusion
The Eternity Shroud offers an incredible amount of raw damage output and the ability to completely ignore enemy non-stop Chaos Resistance.
But to leverage its full potential, it can be very restrictive in terms of gearing. Even if not min maxed, it can still be an immense source of damage. And the added utility from the Eternity Sphere can be a potent defensive mechanism if played to its strength.
If you have reserved enough POE Currency in the early stage of Path of Exile 3.22 Trail of the Ancestors League, you can consider getting a The Eternity Shroud directly. You will definitely get unexpected surprises!