Choose From These Ascendancies For Archmage Build To Start Your POE 3.24 Necropolis League!

Archmage is receiving some huge buffs in terms of sustainability and league start viability. So in this guide, we’ll explore the optimal ascendancies for Archmage and mana stacking builds in Path of Exile 3.24: Necropolis, aiming to assist you in determining the best class and build to start your new league journey. Of course, it is also essential for you to begin new league with enough POE Currency.

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To start with, let’s talk about the Elementalist. The primary reason to opt for the Elementalist ascendancy is if you intend to specifically run Lightning Conduit. This skill requires shock and shock effect to truly shine.
The Elementalist’s Shaper of Storms passive is pivotal, as it ensures that all of your hits cause shock, while also granting your shock a base value of 15%, regardless of your damage output. This base value can be further amplified with modifiers such as increased ailment and shock effect. Lightning Conduit Elementalist synergizes exceptionally well with Archmage for this reason.
One of the Lightning Mastery passives stipulates that increases and reductions to maximum mana also apply to shock effect, albeit at 30% of their value. Considering the numerous maximum mana nodes you’d acquire on the skill tree as an Archmage mana stacking build, you’ll already be approaching the shock cap solely from this source.

Thus, if you appreciate the play style of Lightning Conduit, starting as an Elementalist is highly recommended. However, if your interest lies more in Archmage mana stacking and less in the Lightning Conduit skill itself, you might find it more suitable to opt and buy POE Currency for something like a Hierophant or a Ascendant

Ascendant

Then consider the Ascendant for POE 3.24, also known as the Scion. Given the strength of Hierophant for mana stacking, the Ascendant ascendancy notable is your go-to choice for an Archmage build on an Ascendant.

It offers access to many features that make the Hierophant ascendancy great, including increased maximum mana, damage taken from mana before life, and buffs to Arcane Surge, albeit at slightly lower values.

However, the primary reason to consider a Ascendant build is the Agnostic. This keystone passive removes all of your energy shield. Whenever your HP is not full, your mana rapidly drains to convert into health until reaching full HP again. With around 10,000 maximum mana, this translates to 2,000 life regeneration per second.

Although technically possible on any ascendancy, it doesn’t synergize well with the Hierophant builds discussed earlier. As one of the key benefits of the true Hierophant ascendancy, the large energy shield from Sanctuary of Thought is nullified by the Agnostic. Therefore, Ascendant shines for agnostic builds. In addition, the importance of POE Items is also indispensable.

Hierophant

Next, we have Hierophant. This is probably my top pick for a generic Archmage mana stacking build in Path of Exile 3.24. All of its ascendancy notables synergize incredibly well with the Archmage support gem.

You’ve got Divine Guidance, which gives you a huge amount of increased mana. It also causes 10% of incoming damage to be taken from mana instead of life, and this stacks with Mind Over Matter, making Hierophant defensively one of the strongest Mind Over Matter builds.

It grants Transfiguration of Mind, which causes increases in reductions to maximum mana also to apply to your damage at 30% of their value. This is incredibly strong since Archmage mana stackers are going to be grabbing as many increased maximum mana nodes on the passive tree as possible.

For Hierophant notables, we can get Sanctuary of Thought. Defensively, this is huge for a mana stacking build. Sometimes, this gets overlooked, but gaining 20% of your maximum mana as an extra energy shield is kind of crazy when you’re stacking close to 10,000 mana.

This is going to give you something in the realm of 2,000 energy shield without any POE Orbs. The mana reservation efficiency line isn’t really that impactful for most Archmage mana stacking builds as they are going to be avoiding reserving mana, but it could situationally be helpful.

1% increased area of effect per 50 unreserved maximum mana, is situationally also very strong for something like Ball Lightning or Shock Nova skills that have an AOE component. This is going to drastically increase their clear and even their damage. However, for something which doesn’t scale off of AOE, this isn’t really going to be helpful.
The last to make Hierophant the strongest and comfiest ascendancy to play is 50% less mana cost of skills is absolutely huge for Archmage builds. This ascendancy alone should make mana costs quite manageable.

Hierophant also gets access to one of the strongest starting locations on the tree. For Caster, you get early access to things like increased damage, increased life, increased cast speed, increased spell damage, increased Elemental damage, AOE damage, and some Elemental resistances, making Hierophant a very strong choice when looking at a POE 3.24 league start character.
In conclusion, expect POE Items to be more expensive than we’re used to it being, especially at the new league start. Probably play Hierophant if you want to try out different skills and want an all-around solid Archmage mana stacker. Pick the Ascendant if you’d like to build around the Agnostic, and go Elementalist if you want to run Lightning Conduit specifically.