Path Of Exile Resource #6 - Kaom's Heart Unique Item Review

Kaom's Heart in Path Of Exile is a unique glorious plate that gives 500 points towards your maximum life, as well as up to 40 percent increased fire damage, and has no sockets. Kaom's Heart also has a legacy variant, which grants you 1000 points towards your maximum life and the same maximum percentage towards increased fire damage as well as no sockets.

Item Usefulness Information - This item has a possible widespread usage for most builds, as if you want to use only one skill for clearing areas and farming, this item can be equipped. This item is more suited towards builds that are life based, as the increased life that Kaom's Heart gives is quite substantial and can be easily enhanced by grabbing increased maximum life nodes on the skill tree. This unique is probably most effective when equipped by a melee character, as most melee characters scale some damage with fire damage, and have access to more and better maximum life nodes on their skill tree than any other character class in the game. Builds that deal fire damage either on a melee, range, or spell character can use this unique and gain a nice boost to their damage per second. For example, a firestorm or flameblast spell character that uses a staff and only uses either skill as their main skill separately can utilize this unique to bolster their defenses if they are life based, and increased their damage per second. The armor that this unique grants to the wearer is a maximum of 664, which is quite low for armor and physical damage mitigation, but since this unique grants you 500 increased life, or 1000 increased life if using the legacy variant, the health that it grants you becomes your main form of damage mitigation, not just physical damage mitigation. This makes it more useful in some cases than other unique chest pieces, such as Lightning Coil, since if you scale increased maximum life on your skill tree, it can be more effective in some cases than scaling large amounts of armor. The strength requirement to wear this unique is 191, which may be high for some character classes, and might mean that you need to find or buy pieces of gear that grant additional strength to your character once equipped. 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 item is useful since it greatly bolsters your defenses if you are life based, and it increases the amount of fire damage you deal which is ideal if you are playing a character that mainly deals fire damage.

Informative Links -
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Kaom%27s_Heart - additional information regarding the Kaom's Heart unique
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Lightning_Coil - additional information regarding the Lightning Coil unique