Updated for Patch 3.21
In Path of Exile, Unique Helmets offer great power and defense to your character. Equipped in the "headgear" slot, they provide a diverse range of defensive and offensive bonuses suited to different playstyles and attributes. Unlike regular Rare Helmets, Unique Helmets are specialized, catering to specific character archetypes, sometimes being a nice addition to an already fine build, but at times they are a key component that ties everything together. Strength-based Helmets excel in Armor. Dexterity-based ones prioritize Evasion. For Intelligence-based characters, Energy Shield-fortified helmets safeguard against all kinds of non-Chaos damage. You can also find bases sharing two of these three aspects. And let's not forget very niche Ward Helmets.
Besides the regular defensive stats, each Helmet has its own quirk that is usually found nowhere else. What you have to keep in mind when selecting any Unique Item, is to compare it to a Rare counterpart within your budget. In most cases, Rare Items are more powerful, especially if you're familiar with possible modifiers you can get there. Uniques have a fixed set of mods that you probably want to "exploit". A trait that all Helmets share is the space for a Lab Enchant as one of their mods - it can improve any Skill in the game in various ways. Specific Labyrinth Enchantments are hard to get because there are so many of them.
Below you will find the list of all Unique Helmets that can be acquired in the current state of the game. We will clarify why each Helmet is good or bad, describe the circumstances in which the Helmet works the best, and if applicable, provide examples of some builds in which these items are especially useful.
Strength Helmets | |
Ezomyte Peak - Quite a good level-1 Helmet for Templars, Duelists, Rangers, or Marauders. For a level-1 headpiece, it provides you with decent Armour, Maximum Life, and the Unwavering Stance for Stun Immunity - great in Mud Flats. Overall, Goldrim is still better. | |
Required Level: 1 (84-113) Armour |
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Thrillsteel - The permanent Onslaught buff increases Attack, Cast, and Movement Speed, which is excellent for leveling as it speeds up the whole process. | |
Required Level: 18 (92-115) Armour |
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The Baron - A build-defining Item for The Baron Zombie Necromancer. It's worthless in any other build and is also no good without massive amounts of Strength. | |
Required Level: 26 (130-150) Armour |
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Blood Price - Rarely used Helmet. It severely reduces the Maximum Life of the wearer, which is too big of a price to pay for the relatively insubstantial upside. | |
Required Level: 40 (198-233) Armour |
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Hrimnor's Resolve - It has some beneficial stats - a significant boost to Armor, Maximum Life, Cold Resistance, and increased Fire Damage. It is decent for builds like Holy Flame Totem or some kind of Chieftain. Useful for leveling, but gets overshadowed by much better options later on. | |
Required Level: 55 (552-715) Armour |
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Abyssus - Abyssus is often used in Attack builds disregarding the character's safety as it nearly doubles the Physical Damage taken. It is, however, a good choice if you lack flat Physical Damage (for example in a Facebreaker build), or simply if you want to have more of it. You can try to redirect the incoming Physical Damage to be taken as some other type of damage to mitigate the downside (Lightning Coil Body Armour is a good example of such a tool). | |
Required Level: 60 (692-838) Armour |
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Replica Abyssus - A replica version of Abyssus is used in Attack builds dealing Elemental, not Physical Damage. It's much less popular and often used if you lack flat Elemental Damage (it may happen if you're wielding Paradoxica or a similar weapon). The increased Elemental Damage Taken downside can be mitigated if you convert this type of damage to Chaos with additions like Divine Flesh Keystone or Incandescent Heart Body Armour. | |
Required Level: 60 (692-838) Armour |
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Cowl of the Thermophile - The most unique aspect of this Helmet is that it fixes your Fire Resistance at 75% with no possibility of increasing or lowering it. Its most notable use is in Inquisitor Miners to have Righteous Fire on and not die instantly - RF grants more Spell Damage. You can anoint it twice or apply an additional Lab Enchantment to it. | |
Required Level: 60 (553-685) Armour |
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Echoes of Creation - A great addition to builds using multiple Warcries, which are almost exclusively Marauders' domain, more specifically, Bererksers'. To not die from self-inflicted damage all you need is Armour, a source of Life Recovery, and an Attack with low attack frequency, such as Rage Vortex. For each used Warcry, the next few Exerted Attacks will deal up to 15% more damage per Warcry, which is a lot. | |
Required Level: 65 (678-954) |
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The Formless Flame - It's not a good item. The flat reduced Fire Damage Taken doesn't do much against big hits, and the increase to Armour is mediocre at best even with tons of Overcapped Fire Resistance. It may find its way into the build where the character takes only Fire, Physical, or Chaos Damage, such as this Reap Chieftain. | |
Required Level: 65 (678-954) Armour |
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The Formless Inferno - It is too, not a popular choice. It increases Minions' Maximum Life, which is the most valued in builds where they're used as ammo, to explode via Minion Instability. The Infernal Legion is a regular Support Gem that sets your Minions on fire and is often used with Skitterbots so that they can apply all three Elemental Ailments at once. | |
Required Level: 65 (377-434) Armour |
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Usurper's Penance - It's almost exclusively used in builds that extend the upper limit of Maximum Frenzy Charges and deal damage via Bleeding. Even then, in this niche environment, it's not a good pick. It also has an unexplored, borderline useless synergy with Critical Strikes, which does not go well with Damage over Time, as DoTs cannot Crit. | |
Required Level: 69 (559-772) Armour |
Dexterity Helmets | ||
Goldrim - The most popular leveling Helmet in the game. It's cheap, can be worn at level 1, and provides you with amounts of Elemental Resistances able to compete with proper Rare Helmets. It has no maximum Life or any significant defensive stat, so you should replace it later. | ||
Required Level: 1 (49-77) Evasion |
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Fairgraves' Tricorne - Given it has to compete with Goldrim for a spot as a leveling Helmet, it's used much less often, it's much worse. | ||
Required Level: 18 (90-117) Evasion |
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Heatshiver - Heatshiver is actually popular in a lot of end-game builds as it may grant tons of extra Fire Damage, given you can Chill and Freeze bosses, and you deal a lot of Cold Damage already. You may see it being worn by Blade Vortex Occultists, Ice Shot Deadeyes, Inquisitors with Inevitable Judgement, Spectral Shield Throw, Glacial Hammer builds, or glass-canon miners. | ||
Required Level: 20 (181-254) Evasion |
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Elevore - A Helmet with a substantial bonus to Spell Suppression Chance and Evasion. It performs well as a cheap alternative in builds lacking Suppression, it has much more of it than even the best Rare Helmet. The Life Recovery on Suppressing damage is also good against multiple small Spell Hits you're often exposed to during mapping. | ||
Required Level: 30 (240-344) Evasion |
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Rat's Nest - Its notable qualities are high Evasion, increased Crit Chance, and increases in Movement, and Attack Speed. It's pretty generic and fits most of the low-level Attack builds that already have their Elemental Resistances sorted out. | ||
Required Level: 55 (690-812) Evasion |
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Cowl of the Cryophile - It has currently no use in any build that we know of. | ||
Required Level: 60 (553-685) Evasion |
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Saqawal's Flock - An interesting Helmet that can become a foundation for a Twister build. All you need is a source of Aspect of the Avian buff, and to reduce this Skill's Effect Duration. Other than that, it's bad. | ||
Required Level: 60 (553-685) Evasion |
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Starkonja's Head - A rather generic headpiece that most Attack-based builds may wear for its bonuses to Attack Speed, Evasion, Crit Chance, and most notably - Maximum Life and Dexterity, which this Helmet has a lot of. | ||
Required Level: 60 (692-876) Evasion |
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Alpha's Howl - A quite popular Helmet for Aura-stackers. They tend to value Aura Effect/Level and Reservation Efficiency, and this Helmet is especially good at that. A lot of starter builds use it too as these virtues are very vital as all builds Reserve Mana. | ||
Required Level: 64 (664-850) Evasion |
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Replica Alpha's Howl - It's a much less popular option than the regular Alpha's Howl, mostly because it affects socketed Heralds, not Auras, and there are fewer builds that may benefit from it. | ||
Required Level: 65 (664-850) Evasion |
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Assailum - This Helmet may often be implemented into a Bow-wielding Gladiator to inflict Bleeding. Snipe Skill (which can be obtained from a regular Support Gem too) is currently used only in Bleed builds (and some Ignite builds) as they tend to struggle with bosses the most. | ||
Required Level: 65 (719-925) Evasion |
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Obscurantis - If you stack Accuracy, it's probably the best choice. There is only one way to benefit from stacking this stat - it's by allocating Juggernaut's Undeniable. There is currently one meta build that does so. In no other build, you will struggle with the lack of Accuracy so much to put on a Helmet with the singular purpose of granting more Accuracy. | ||
Required Level: 70 (760-961) Evasion |
Intelligence Helmets | |||
Crown of Thorns - It's no good, the Pain Attunement only grants more Damage, and equipping this Helmet is not worth it. | |||
Required Level: 1 (157-235) Energy Shield |
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Asenath's Mark - Asenath's Mark is often used in Deadeye Bow builds, such as Ice Shot, Storm Rain, or Tornado Shot. It allows you to cast socketed here utility Spells with high frequency, which may be a Firewall, Hydrosphere, Tornado, Lightning Warp, or Curse. | |||
Required Level: 8 (42-65) Energy Shield |
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Mark of the Red Covenant - It's bad and very rarely used in Raging Spirit builds. Usually Minion builds use a Rare Helmet with extra Gem Levels for Minions Skill Gems, so it may be considered only as a budget option. The reduction in the Maximum number of Summoned Raging Spirits is also a huge downside. | |||
Required Level: 26 (58-83) Energy Shield |
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Wraithlord - It has currently no use in any build that we know of. | |||
Required Level: 34 (79-100) Energy Shield |
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Doedre's Scorn - It's a bit awkward Helmet since the extra Levels to Curse Gems affect only the ones socketed inside of it, and if you want to stack the number of Curses, which this Helmet incentivises, you're probably not going to socket them here. It's not very good but may be used with Impending Doom or Hexblast due to the extra Chaos Damage per Curse. | |||
Required Level: 39 (141-168) Energy Shield |
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Maw of Conquest - It's not very useful, mediocre at best. Can be implemented into multiple builds that rely on Maximum Life and need some extra Spell Crit Chance. | |||
Required Level: 48 (147-192) Energy Shield |
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Sudden Dawn - It has currently no use in any build that we know of. ES Recharge is rarely an issue. | |||
Required Level: 48 (196-247) Energy Shield |
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Chitus' Apex - It's the only Helmet that increases Experience gain, that's why it is worn by characters getting serviced in a Domain of Eternal Conflict to gain more Experience, where they just stand still for five minutes. Don't use it for other purposes - it's very bad. | |||
Required Level: 54 (55-64) Energy Shield |
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The Devouring Diadem - It's extremely useful in builds that need a lot of Reservation Efficiency, use expensive Skills, and don't rely on Energy Shield for survivability. The issue of Mana Reservation and Mana Cost has to be overcome by nearly every build there is, especially at the start of a new league It is when this item is the most expensive. It doesn't really improve the character directly, only works out a problem that can be solved in other ways. You can also allocate Mind Over Matter Keystone to still retain a portion of the original purpose of Energy Shield if you can generate it efficiently enough. We've used it in this Explosive Trap build. | |||
Required Level: 54 (154-204) Energy Shield |
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Cowl of the Ceraunophile - It has currently no use in any build that we know of. | |||
Required Level: 59 (96-122) Energy Shield |
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Flamesight - It has currently no use in any build that we know of. There are more efficient ways to Scorch. | |||
Required Level: 59 (204-258) Energy Shield |
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Galesight - This Helmet sees use in some builds that deal Cold Damage and rely on Critical Strikes. The Brittle debuff is very potent, it makes the target more likely to be Struck Critically, making all increases to Crit Cance much more effective. It's also good with the increased effectiveness of the character's non-damaging Elemental Ailments, often present in Rangers' builds. There are, however, other ways to apply this effect without sacrificing a Helmet slot, so it's not that good. | |||
Required Level: 59 (204-258) Energy Shield |
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Thundersight - It has currently no use in any build that we know of. There are more efficient ways to Sap. | |||
Required Level: 59 (204-258) Energy Shield |
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Wilma's Requital - Very popular headwear. It grants Ancestral Bond, so it forces the user to use Totems as their sole damaging Skills. It also increases your Attack Speed alongside your Cast Speed, making it great for Attack Totems, especially Ballistas. You obviously won't go out of your way to get more Cast Speed, but it comes bundled up with Haste, Frenzy Charges, Onslaught, or Adrenaline which are meant to be inclusive for both - Spell Casters and Attack builds. It's called double-dipping. Here's an example of its usage. | |||
Required Level: 59 (180-238) Energy Shield |
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Plume of Pursuit - It is very interesting, but not really useful. You emaciate yourself by disabling Critical Strike Chance on your Spells while ensuring Crit Chance on a final Skill's repeat, so it's already bad as it limits your "Crit Chance" to 50%. Additionally, the non-Crit Hit will do almost no damage. There are not that many Skills that repeat themselves, and it's just generally better to invest in Crit Chance. It may resurface as a valid option if more items that grant more Damage (like Controlled Destruction Support) or Critical Strike Damage (Marylene's Fallacy, The Winds of Fate) at the cost of Critical Strike Chance will be introduced. | |||
Required Level: 64 (64-92) Energy Shield |
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Fenumus' Toxins - You can quite easily generate Power Charges, reach a 100% chance to Poison, and even Hinder enemies without using this Helmet. Moreover, Poison and Power Charges don't mix very well. It will remain bad until the Poion & Critical Strike synergy will get some improvements. | |||
Required Level: 65 (176-224) Energy Shield |
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Hale Negator - It may be good in an Abyss Jewels-stacking build, one that rarely gets Hit due to high Evasion or Block Chance, or one that mitigates so much incoming damage that it rarely receives Savage Hits. Another prerequisite to make it viable is already poor Recovery of Life and ES, which is often easily obtained via Ghost Dance, Aegis Aurora, or simply Life Flask. There are very few builds where this Helmet would make much sense. | |||
Required Level: 65 (73-84) Energy Shield |
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Rime Gaze - Rime Gaze is good in Cold DoT builds like Wintertide Brand or Vortex/Cold Snap Occultists, but even then it has to compete with Eye of Malice and Crown of the Inward Eye, which are often better alternatives. It's very cheap and good for a starter build as it requires no additional investment into Cold Resistance Reduction or other stats. | |||
Required Level: 65 (109-126) Energy Shield |
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Scold's Bridle - There are some instances where self-inflicted damage is desirable, like in a Wardloop or Forbidden Rite builds, but in most cases these also heavily value low Mana Cost of Skills to cast a lot of them very fast, or simply use Forbidden Rite to damage themselves. The Helmet also reduces your Cast Speed. It has no use in the current meta. | |||
Required Level: 65 (73-84) Energy Shield |
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Crown of Eyes - It's used in Attack builds with a lot of Spell Damage, or in a majority of builds using a Wand to Attack. These builds often source Spell Damage from the Iron Will Keystone and a lot of Strength. Some builds don't really invest that much into Spell Damage, it's just a byproduct of using Wands - there's a Wand Mastery that's very similar to the last line of this Item, allowing you to double-dip. It also grants Accuracy which is valuable in Attack builds, especially when combined with Wands where it's harder to get. | |||
Required Level: 69 (176-230) Energy Shield |
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Eber's Unification - It's a good Helmet for a build where you accumulate a lot of Elemental Damage, but Convert it to Chaos later. The Void Gaze Skill reduces the Chaos Resistance of your enemies by 20%, which is equal to two-thirds of a Despair Curse, and the extra Elemental Damage as Chaos Damage encourages using Skills that deal inherently Elemental Damage. The most popular usage of it is with Anomalous Detonate Dead Occultist - the Fire Damage gets easily converted here. It may be the best-in-slot Helmet for such a build. | |||
Required Level: 69 (200-257) Energy Shield |
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Indigon - It is only popular amongst Mana-stacking Hierophants. These builds Reserve no Mana so they can spend a lot of it. The more Mana they spend, the more damage they deal. it doesn't really require increasing the Mana Cost of Skills as the Helmet does that too. It's very convenient and in many cases irreplaceable. | |||
Required Level: 69 (200-257) Energy Shield |
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Ylfeban's Trickery - Relying on enemies to Hit you is a horrible idea, but a fundamental mechanics to benefit from this Helmet. The random Hex or Shocked Ground is also nothing to be excited about. It may be good against specific enemies on a build with no Evasion and Hex Master Keystone, but that's not how you approach content in this game. Bad choice. | |||
Required Level: 69 (184-248) Energy Shield |
Armour/Evasion Helmets | |||
Deidbell - It's bad. With enough CDR for Warcries, it loses its only redeeming quality. It also disables Life Leech when you need it the most. | |||
Required Level: 33 (290-397) Armour |
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Skullhead - Minions are easily replaceable, and there are many other, better ways to enhance their survivability. Summoners tend to wear Rare Helmets anyway, so there is no use for a Skullhead beyond the leveling phase. | |||
Required Level: 36 (156-208) Armour |
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El'Abin's Visage - Often used in builds where the Crucible Passives are particularly impactful, such as Rolling Magma Miner or Spectral Shield Throw. You have to be familiar with Crucible Passives to evaluate its worth in the build you're running. | |||
Required Level: 43 (210-294) Armour |
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Black Sun Crest - Black Sun Crest, if well-rolled, is excellent in an Omni-stacking build, most of which are Deadeyes. The extra Attributes, later transformed into Omniscience, are hard to come by, especially in these quantities. | |||
Required Level: 51 (276-387) Armour |
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The Fledgling - It's relatively good in most Projectile builds, especially in the ones focusing on clear speed as the extra Projectile Speed is important there. Far Shot too drastically improves damage against any opponent far from you and it synergizes with Projectile Speed. It requires good mobility as the wearer is completely powerless against nearby enemies. It also has to compete with Crown of Eyes, Black Sun Crest, and other Helmets in the same niche, so it's not very popular. | |||
Required Level: 51 (345-465) Armour |
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Crest of Desire - One of the most interesting Helmets in the game. Any Skill Gem socketed in its sole socket will get extra Levels and Quality, so it'll probably be a Spell with a potent Quality modifier, one that doesn't really need Support Gems to be any good. The most popular usages of it are in Herald of Thunder or Minion Guardian builds. | |||
Required Level: 58 (320-472) Armour |
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Devoto's Devotion - It is a cheap Helmet used in builds in dire need of Attack Speed. It also boosts Chaos Resistance, reduces Physical Damage your character deals, and increases Movement Speed. It's often considered a budget/starter choice for non-Physical Attack builds, such as this Toxic Rain one. | |||
Required Level: 67 (405-561) Armour |
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The Bringer of Rain - If a Helmet requires you to relinquish your Body Armour, it better be good. This one is not. Do not use it. It's hard to overstate how important Chest Armours are. | |||
Required Level: 67 (486-748) Armour |
Armour/Energy Shield Helmets | |||
Honourhome - It may be good when your Skills are too expensive in the early game, but that can be solved easily with a Mana Flask or other items. Use Goldrim instead. | |||
Required Level: 12 (68-112) Armour |
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Veil of the Night - It's actually baffling how such a bad Helmet is allowed to exist unchanged for so long. You cannot redirect all the Elemental Damage taken to be taken as Chaos, only up to 75%, but even if you could, it would still be bad - it grants nothing of value. |
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Required Level: 22 (61-76) Armour |
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Replica Veil of the Night - Defences (Armour, Energy Shield, and Evasion) are Zero, which is bad since all builds use them. The upsides are marginal. Very bad choice. | |||
Required Level: 22 (61-76) Armour |
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Mindspiral - This Helmet provides tons of Maximum Mana, and ES based on how much Mana you have, making it good for Mana-stacking builds. We've used it in one of our Archmage builds. You won't be able to Leech Mana so you have to rely on Mana Regeneration or Mana Flasks. | |||
Required Level: 37 (101-119) Armour |
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Kitava's Thirst - It reduces Cast Speed and grants no bonus to Maximum Life, but in return has a 50% chance to Trigger Socketed Spell after spending 100 Mana on a Skill. It's rarely used in builds where your main damaging Skill cost 100 or more Mana, and the significant reduction to Cast Speed won't hinder you too much. A Bladefall is a good example, where you cast Blade Blast automatically as these two often are often used together. | |||
Required Level: 44 (202-246) Armour |
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Geofri's Crest - Used in a build where you deal damage with Holy Relics, which are Minions. It has quite a bit of Resistances if well-rolled, even Chaos Resistance, so you may use it during a leveling phase too. | |||
Required Level: 53 (314-402) Armour |
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Lightpoacher - It is one of the fundamental items in an Abyss Jewel Stacking build. The extra Physical Damage as Extra Damage of each Element per Spirit Charge is extremely valuable if you have a lot of such Jewels, but the Spirit Burst itself is bad and does little to no damage. It requires a very specific setup so don't use it unless you know how to harness its potential. | |||
Required Level: 53 (143-161) Armour |
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Craiceann's Chitin - It's bad. Crab Barriers are not really used in any meta-build, and even then, it doesn't bring much to the table. | |||
Required Level: 58 (384-529) Armour |
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Crown of the Tyrant - It's designed to be worn by Aurabots or Minion builds but fails in both cases. Aurabots prefer a Helmet that grants Mana Reservation Efficiency. Minion Builds use a Rare Helmet with extra Gem Levels to Minion Skill Gems. And it only has a single socket. The only case where it's useful is to put it on your Animated Guardian. | |||
Required Level: 58 (160-189) Armour |
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Mask of the Spirit Drinker - It doesn't allow you to use your ES, you cannot gain it by any means, and it starts at 0 so no swapping will work. In return, it Regenerates up to 300 Life a second, two-thirds that of a level 20 Vitality. We see no use for this item. | |||
Required Level: 58 (384-604) Armour |
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Mask of the Stitched Demon - It is very often used on an Animated Guardian, not on a player's character. It's easier to increase this Minion's Energy Shield with Grave Intentions notable - it already has high Maximum Life. Great when it comes to increasing its durability. | |||
Required Level: 58 (160-189) Armour |
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Mask of the Tribunal - Used in Aurabot builds. With enough Attributes it grants a fair amount of Reservation Efficiency, and also provides your Allies with other kinds of bonuses, all of them valuable. | |||
Required Level: 58 (400-567) Armour |
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Crown of the Inward Eye - An extremely popular Helmet in builds relying on Life, Mana, Armour, or ES. Grants tons of Armour and ES, increases Maximum Life, Mana, and Energy Shield. It also makes all the increases to ES, Life, and Mana affect your Attack and Spell Damage at a fraction of their original value. Energy Blade Inquisitor makes very good use of it but even builds with no Life or no Energy Shield find this Helmet great. | |||
Required Level: 63 (969-1117) Armour |
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Speaker's Wreath - It prohibits your Minions to kill non-Ignited enemies by using Hit damage. Minion builds tend not to pick up much Dexterity, but even if you have a lot of it, it won't improve your Build that much. With 500 Dexterity, which is hard to get for a Minion build, it grants less Attack and Movement Speed than a level-1 Minion Speed Support. Extremely bad Helmet. | |||
Required Level: 63 (224-258) Armour |
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The Brine Crown - Mediocre pick. It provides you with a lot of Life, ES, and Armour, but so does the Crown of the Inward Eye. The +3% to Maximum Cold Resistance is actually quite good if you plan to use Melding of the Flesh with it. We wouldn't suggest choosing it unless you really want that Max Cold Res - you cannot get it normally on a Rare Helmet. | |||
Required Level: 63 (761-1032) Armour |
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The Broken Crown - It plays a role in Cast on Death Discharge builds. You can put an additional 5-link CWDT setup here to deal more damage on death. Other than that, it has no use. It does have a lot of Chaos Resistance, but not that much to consider equipping it. | |||
Required Level: 63 (358-516) Armour |
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Ahn's Contempt - Not good. You can easily mitigate Extra Damage from Critical Strikes with Brass Dome, Viridi's Veil, or even passives. The extra Chaos Damage is also not great - there's not a lot of it. All the other Stats are common. It reduces your Maximum Power Charges by 1 which is really unnecessary. | |||
Required Level: 68 (257-444) Armour |
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Forbidden Shako - Used only in builds where the Support Gem Level matters a lot - it's usually very hard to increase the level of Support Gems by 5, let alone 15. The best example of it is Ice Bite - it adds tons of extra Cold Damage at high Gem Levels. It's great on a Flicker Strike with Paradoxica Sword as these types of builds often lack Flat Damage. Impending Doom Support is excellent too. The secondary built-in low-level Support Gem is less important. | |||
Required Level: 68 (143-161) Armour |
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Malachai's Vision - The condition of having all your other items (Chest, Gloves, Boots, Weapon, Off-hand, and Jewelry) Corrupted is very restricting. The reward of meeting this condition is not even that good - just a boost to ES and Mana Regen. You may consider using it if you somehow ended up having your other items Corrupted, which doesn't happen often. Currently, we see no use for it. | |||
Required Level: 68 (161-185) Armour |
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Memory Vault - It encourages Reserving a lot of Mana, but at the same time Reduces Reservation Efficiency so you cannot have that many Auras on at once. It also requires a significant amount of Mana to really benefit from the increase to Armour. A character that doesn't necessarily need a lot of Auras, just a few powerful ones, may benefit from it. The Arakaali's Fang Spider Summoner Guardian is an example of such a build. | |||
Required Level: 68 (161-185) Armour |
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Viridi's Veil - An immensely useful Helmet. Even if you have only one Magic Ring, it is still good - you can completely negate Extra Damage from Crits, be unaffected by Curses, or both. It grants no Life, so it's more often used in Energy Shield builds. It even has Elemental Resistances. The benefits it can provide are really useful after you notice how many Maps apply some sort of Curse or increase Monsters' Crit Chance/Damage. As for the cost - Rings usually provide Life, Attributes, or Resistances, so it's not that high of a price. You can still have one Prefix for Maximum Life and one Suffix for Resistances or Attributes on a Magic Ring. It really shines in a build where you inflict many Curses on yourself. | |||
Required Level: 68 (354-481) Armour |
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Voll's Vision - You may see it being used in many Lightning Arrow builds combined with Kaom's Spirit Gloves. The Life Regeneration it grants if none of your items are Corrupted is one of the very few ways to get on a Ranger that already heavily invested in damage-oriented items and passives. With the aforementioned Gloves, Life Regeneration grants a lot of Rage instead. | |||
Required Level: 68 (421-485) Armour |
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Ancient Skull - A popular choice for Arakaali's Fang builds. It lowers Minions' Life, but these Spiders cannot be damaged anyway. In return, it increases their Movement Speed and Crit Chance. The whispers they hear deals tons of damage to them (does not apply), and massively increases their Attack Speed and Damage. Note that it is especially good in Hit-based Spiders, not Poisoning Spiders. | |||
Required Level: 73 (492-681) Armour |
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Maw of Mischief - A core element of a Death Wish build, as it's the only source of this Skill. It is a very unique build that stacks Minions' Maximum Life and character's Fire Damage so the implementation of it has to be intentional. | |||
Required Level: 73 (197-227) Armour |
Energy Shield/Evasion Helmets | |||
Malachai's Simula - It's hard to find a build where you would need a Blood Magic from a Helmet. For leveling use Goldrim, and if you do need a Blood Magic Keystone, simply allocate it. Glimpse of Chaos is usually much better for a Bood Magic builds. The upside is great, but not worth the price. | |||
Required Level: 17 (197-227) Evasion |
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Curtain Call - You may spot it in some Manaforged Burning Arrow Inquisitor builds (the Mine types only). Its conditions are very hard to fulfil - 800 Dexterity and Intelligence to throw two extra Mines seems inefficient, but these types of builds go for triple-stacking all three Attributes anyway. It's good in these specific builds, very niche. | |||
Required Level: 20 (29-38) Evasion |
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Leer Cast - Utter garbage. It has no use in any build that we know of. | |||
Required Level: 28 (77-88) Evasion |
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Replica Leer Cast - It is somehow less interesting than the Leer Cast. Even the Life and Mana bonuses can be accessed on regular Rare Helmets. Bad. | |||
Required Level: 28 (77-88) Evasion |
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The Three Dragons - Can be used in a Lightning Conduit Elementalist. It says here that you cannot Shock with Lightning Damage, but that's a lie. With Elementalist's Shaper of Storms Keystone you're guaranteed to Shock with each Hit (which you have to in this build), and additionally Chill and Freeze now. It's a shame that such an interesting Helmet has no other practical use. | |||
Required Level: 35 (96-103) Evasion |
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Willclash - Has some basic defences and great defensive scaling with Power Charges. Chance to Block Spells is hard to acquire, but from this item, you can get tons of it. You lose all Power Charges on Block so be sure that you have a good Charge generation strategy, or you rarely get Hit (with a lot of Evasion for example). It would be an S-tier, if not for the lack of Maximum Life or Resistances. | |||
Required Level: 35 (432-515) Evasion |
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The Gull - The Gull shines the brightest during the first few days of a new league on the regular maps, where your character is still underperforming. After allocating some nodes for extra Shrines and Shrine duration on your Atlas Passives Tree, it becomes a powerhouse due to the extra Shrine Effect and Shrine Buffs' Effect. It can be used in literally any build as Shrines can grant you any Buff, but it synergizes especially well with Blunderbore Body Armour. It's bad when you're planning to do content with no Shrines (like Delve). | |||
Required Level: 38 (228-297) Evasion |
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Eye of Malice - Insanely powerful item. The monsters you fight have low Elemental Resistances - apply Exposure and two Cureses to lower their Resistance even further, to the negative values. The "50% increased Fire and Cold Resistances" will then lower these Resistances even more, up to -200%. Invest in reduction to Resistances with additional debuffs like Scorch or Combustion. Keep in mind, Penetration will be added later, it is not multiplied by the Helmet's mod - that's why it is worn mostly by DoT builds as Damage over Time cannot Penetrate Resistances. Very impactful in all Cold or Fire Builds, but be aware of enemies with extra Resistances from various modifiers, these will be actually tougher. It is popular with Fire Trap Elementalist or some kind of Cold Damage build. | |||
Required Level: 45 (610-822) Evasion |
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Crown of the Pale King - You cannot say with a straight face that you plan to slay hordes of enemies via Refelced Damage - a deeply flawed game mechanics, a joke. | |||
Required Level: 52 (352-474) Evasion |
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Gorgon's Gaze - It's supposed to petrify your enemies - reducing their Action Speed to 0 over 2 seconds via a statue. Seems great on paper, but it doesn't work on bosses that cannot be fully slowed, so any enemy that is worth petrifying. The Skill has a 30-second Cooldown. The Statue can still severy reduce Action Speed as it lasts for 4 seconds. That being said, it's useless - you can just Chill/Freeze, use Vaal Blight to reduce Movement Speed, or Temporal Chains to lower Action Speed, which most Poison builds do. | |||
Required Level: 52 (141-158) Evasion |
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Farrul's Bite - Seems like a decent Helmet for an Attack Build that could benefit from Aspect of the Cat Buff. Definitely great with one of the best Armours - Farrul's Fur, but keep in mind that you can just add the Aspect of the Cat Skill to any Rare item. It can be a cheap, temporary replacement for a proper Helmet later down the line. Its biggest flaw is the lack of Maximum Life. Also, Blind is rather easy to apply. Try it on a starter version of Trinity Flicker Strike Slayer. | |||
Required Level: 57 (439-592) Evasion |
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Mind of the Council - To fully benefit from it you need a lot of Mana and an Attack Skill with high Attack Speed. You will rapidly lose tons of Mana so be prepared to have a high Mana Recovery rate. This Lightning Arrow Hierophant is an excellent example of how to fit it into a build. | |||
Required Level: 57 (518-666) Evasion |
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The Tempest's Binding - It has ok base stats, Life, Resistances, two bad built-in Support Gems, and a Harbinger of Storms. It's sadly not its redeeming quality. Harbinger of Storms is an immortal Minion that occasionally Chills and Shocks, which you can do more reliably by other means. There are no builds that would use it. | |||
Required Level: 60 (222-287) Evasion |
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The Tempest's Liberation - The "upgraded" version of The Tempest's Binding. It has a bigger Harbinger which applies stronger Chills and Shocks. Still bad. | |||
Required Level: 60 (222-287) Evasion |
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Fractal Thoughts - Very good in Dex-stacking Elemental Damage builds. You can benefit from unparallel bonuses to damage and Maximum Life with enough Dexterity, just be sure your Strength is higher than Intelligence. It's the only viable option in a Siege Ballista Hierophant or Ice Crash Hollow Palm Raider builds after being combined with other Dex-adjacent uniques. | |||
Required Level: 62 (496-669) Evasion |
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Glimpse of Chaos - You need to be careful with it as this Helmet reduces your Elemental Resistances much like The Annihilating Light. It even fixes your Chaos Resistance at 0%, and it is not good, you typically aim for more. In return, it increases Maximum Life, Maximum Mana, and Maximum ES. Compared to the drawbacks it's not worth equipping unless you really want some of these stats - no other Helmet grants you as much of these resources. It is the case with Blood Sacrament Builds where damage scales extraordinarily well with Maximum Life. It may also be used in an Energy Blade Inquisitor because here it benefits from both - Life and ES. | |||
Required Level: 62 (207-239) Evasion List of special corrupted Implicits:
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The Vertex - Reducing Mana Cost of the Skills socketed here is often used for a Divine Blessing Aura that requires a lot of Mana to cast. This issue is often resolved with Eldritch Battery/The Devouring Diadem, but in some builds you just need that Energy Shield to protect your Life Pool. Besides this one quirk, it still has very good base stats with Chaos Resistance on top. Notice the lack of Maximum Life - it has to be in a build that employs multiple other layers of defence like Evasion, Suppression, Overleech, or Armour. The prime example of it being implemented correctly is this Lightning Conduit Trickster build, but most Trickster builds will also find it great. | |||
Required Level: 62 (714-908) Evasion |
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Heretic's Veil - It's supposed to be a host for several Curses supported by Blasphemy Support to make them stronger and Reserve less Mana. Not many builds do so, it's better to Reserve Mana on Auras or other Skills, Curses can be cast normally. Those who decided to use it are usually Curse Bot Occultists with many other uniques to improve Curse Effect. | |||
Required Level: 67 (361-459) Evasion |
Ward Helmets | |||
Cadigan's Crown - It is used for the Battlemage effect, normally only acquired from one of Inquisitor's Keystones. Battlemage states "Gain Added Spell Damage equal to the Damage of Your Main Hand Weapon", so it requires you to have one with high base Flat Damage. It also prevents you from Striking Critically, so it performs the best in some kind of DoT build - these cannot benefit from Crits anyway. We've used it in an Arc Ignite Elementalist build. The lack of any notable stats and inability to deal Critical Strikes is very limiting. The Battlemage is usually not as good as one would think by judging it by how hard it is to acquire. | |||
Required Level: 68 (164-189) Ward |
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Faithguard - Energy Shield is simply better than Ward. Ward breaks after taking any damage, ES does not. There are more items and game mechanics that interact specifically with ES, and the increases are not all there is to it. At the current state of the game, there is no point in equipping this Helmet. | |||
Required Level: 68 (51-63) Ward |
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