Path Of Exile Resource #10 - Void Battery Unique Item Review

Void Battery in Path Of Exile is a unique prophecy wand that when equipped grants the player up to 40 percent increased spell damage from the wand's implicit, up to 20 percent increased cast speed, up to 65 percent increased global critical strike chance, up to 50 more points towards maximum mana, +1 to power charges, and 25 percent increased spell damage per power charge. The downside to using this wand is that it reduces your spell damage by 80 percent. You can dual wield two Void Battery's and double all of the characteristics that the wand has. This includes the downside of equipping the wand, which if dual equipping will reduce your spell damage by a total of 160 percent. This unique has not changed since it's original introduction into the game in May of 2013. The only change that occurred was to the base wand itself, as the spell damage implicit on all wands have raised in value after version 2.3.0 was released.

Item Usefulness Information - This unique is best suited for spell based characters who want incredibly high spell damage and critical strike chance for their spells. With the right spell based character build, dual wielding two Void Battery's can provide some of the highest spell damage and critical strike chance in the game. Down below, I will be describing a build that I believe utilizes Void Battery's most effectively, however this build is just a suggestion, you can choose other character classes if you desire so. In order to fully utilize the power of dual wielding two Void Battery's, the first thing you need to do is make a new witch character who will ascend as an Occultist. The reason why we go Occultist is because Occultist has a notable passive skill called Forbidden Power, which grants you 10 percent chance to gain a power charge on critical strike and grants you an extra power charge. This is perfect for synergy with Void Battery, as Void Battery mainly scales spell damage using power charges. While you gain passive skill points for your skill tree, you will need to spec into all of the extra power charge notables, as more power charges means more damage for your build. When you reach Merciless Act 2, you will need to help Alira for an extra power charge. If all is completed, you should have 10 power charges by endgame. If you dual wield two Void Battery's and have all of these power charges activated, the negative 160 percent spell damage granted by these uniques will be completely negated, and your increased spell damage, from the two wands and the power charges alone, will be 170 percent. This spell damage calculation does not include that you will critical strike with your spells almost 100 percent of the time. Some spells do better with two Void Battery's than others. For example, spells that deal cold damage and/or lightning damage directly or indirectly are better than spells that deal fire damage. This is because your high critical strike chance ensures that enemies hit by your cold and lightning damage based spells will get elemental status ailments. For cold damage spells, the targets will either become chilled or frozen, which is a great defensive buff to you since enemies that are chilled slow down in animation, meaning they have less movement speed and less attack speed, and enemies that are frozen prevents them from taking any actions at all, meaning that they cannot attack you or move towards you. For lighting damage spells, the targets will be shocked, meaning that they take 50 percent increased damage from all sources, which is great for more offensive builds. The increased cast speed that dual wielding two Void Battery's provides is great for almost every spell, as cast speed increases your overall casts per second and therefore damage per second. You cannot use this unique in the early stages of the game, since it's level requirement is level 68. In the late stages of the game, this unique is best when it is dual wielded, and will grant the player incredible amounts of spell damage, great amounts of cast speed, and incredible amounts of critical strike chance.

Informative Links -
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Void_Battery - additional information regarding the Void Battery unique
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Status_ailment - additional information regarding the Status Ailment mechanic
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Occultist - additional information regarding the Occultist ascendancy class