In Path of Exile, Keystones are powerful passive skills that can significantly alter your character's playstyle and capabilities. One such Keystone that stands out is Transcendence, a Timeless Keystone that offers unique defensive and offensive benefits. In this guide, we'll delve into the mechanics of Transcendence, its advantages, and the challenges it presents to help you decide if it's the right choice for your build.

• Transcendence Keystone Overview
• The Transcendence Keystone offers two powerful modifiers
• Addressing the Downsides
• Dealing with Loss of Physical Damage Reduction
• The popular choices for this approach include
• Choosing the Right Ascendancy
• Conclusion

 

↖ Transcendence Keystone Overview

Transcendence is a Timeless Keystone that can be acquired by socketing a specific Timeless Jewel, such as the Militant Faith, into your passive tree. These unique jewels dominate the passive skills within their radius, including Keystone passives, and transform them into new Keystone passive skills based on the type and name of the Timeless Jewel itself.

Property/Concept	Description/Effect	Examples/Methods of Mitigation
Armour applies to Elemental Damage	Armour applies to Fire, Cold and Lightning Damage taken from Hits instead of Physical Damage. This overrides any other value of Armour transfer like Juggernaut's Unbreakable.	Taste of Hate, Dawnbreaker, etc. for conversion
Elemental Resistances and Calculation	Elemental resistances still apply to elemental hits and are applied prior to the armour component of the damage reduction calculation. Damage from multiple elements scales individually.	N/A
Penalty to Maximum Elemental Resistances	There is a penalty to maximum elemental resistances which can negatively affect damage reduction.	Loreweave, Replica Loreweave, Eternal Damnation, etc.

 

↖ The Transcendence Keystone offers two powerful modifiers

• Armor Applies to Elemental Damage: Instead of providing damage reduction against physical hits, your armor value will now be applied to fire, cold, and lightning damage taken from hits. This means you can effectively reduce the impact of dangerous Elemental attacks with your armor.
• Penalty to Maximum Elemental Resistances: Unfortunately, Transcendence comes with a significant downside—a -15% penalty to all Maximum Elemental resistances. This reduction in resistances leaves you more vulnerable to Elemental damage.

 

↖ Addressing the Downsides

To fully utilize Transcendence, you must find ways to offset its downsides.

There are two primary approaches for dealing with the penalty to Maximum Elemental resistances:

• Law of the Wild Unique Body Armors: Law of the Wild or its replica are popular choices. These unique body armors provide a hard cap override, setting your maximum resistances to a fixed value (e.g., 78). This effectively cancels out the -15% penalty from Transcendence, offering a straightforward solution.
• Stacking Additional Maximum Elemental Resistances: Alternatively, you can invest in passive skill tree wheels, unique items, or anointed notables that grant additional maximum Elemental resistances. Combine these modifiers to reach or even exceed the baseline 75% maximum resistances.

 

↖ Dealing with Loss of Physical Damage Reduction

The other downside of Transcendence is that armor no longer reduces physical damage from hits. To counter this, players typically utilize "damage taken as" modifiers. These modifiers convert a portion of physical damage taken into another damage type, ideally Elemental damage, to benefit from armor's damage reduction.

 

↖ The popular choices for this approach include

• Lightning Coil Unique Body Armor: This unique body armor grants 50% of physical damage from hits taken as lightning damage.
• Taste of Hate Unique Flask: This flask converts 15% of physical damage from hits taken as cold damage on a max roll.

 

↖ Choosing the Right Ascendancy

The effectiveness of Transcendence heavily relies on proper gearing and careful planning. Some ascendancy classes like Pathfinder or Chieftain offer specific advantages in dealing with the downsides. The Pathfinder can maintain a Taste of Hate flask permanently, providing a significant chunk of physical damage taken as Elemental damage. Meanwhile, Chieftain already has 20% of physical damage from hits taken as fire through its ascendancy notable.

 

On the other hand, the Juggernaut's Unrelenting ascendancy notable can stack additional physical damage reduction through endurance charges, making it a strong choice for those who prefer this method.

 

↖ Conclusion

Transcendence is undoubtedly one of the most powerful offensive keystones in Path of Exile. It can turn your character into an incredibly tanky force, shrugging off formidable boss abilities. However, it requires careful gearing and commitment to address its downsides properly. If you're willing to invest the time and effort, Transcendence can elevate your build to new heights. But for casual players or those not adequately geared, it may prove to be a challenging and risky choice.