In this guide, we'll be exploring Divine Flesh, one of the most powerful and popular timeless keystones in Path of Exile. Divine Flesh offers unique defensive benefits and interactions with elemental and chaos damage, making it a keystone worth considering for your build. Whether you're a seasoned player or new to the game, this guide will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of Divine Flesh and how to make the most of its mechanics. So let's delve into the world of Divine Flesh and uncover its secrets together!

 

• Acquiring Divine Flesh
• Keystone Mechanics
• Downside
• Eldritch Battery & Battery Staff
• Upside
• Effective Elemental Resistance
• Maximum Chaos Resistance
• Non-Damaging Ailments
• Damaging Ailments
• Penetration
• Synergies
• Shifting More Damage
• Mahuxotl's Machination

 

↖ Acquiring Divine Flesh

Divine Flesh can be acquired by socketing a timeless jewel into your passive tree. This jewel dominates passive skills within its radius, including keystone passives, transforming them into a new keystone specific to the jewel's type and name. Divine Flesh can be obtained from the Glorious Vanity timeless jewel named Xibaqua. Additionally, it is also obtainable from the "Mahu Zottus' Machination" unique shield, which drops from the Trialmaster boss.

 

↖ Keystone Mechanics

Divine Flesh comes with 3 modifiers. Firstly, it bypasses the energy shield, meaning all damage taken will directly affect your life pool, rendering the energy shield ineffective as a defensive mechanic. However, it's important to note that Divine Flesh does not remove your energy shield, allowing you to utilize it for other purposes.

 

↖ Downside

The downside of Divine Flesh lies in its bypassing of the energy shield. This means that the energy shield can no longer absorb damage for you, even if you are using Mind over Matter with Eldritch Battery. However, unlike "The Agnostic" keystone, Divine Flesh does not remove your energy shield entirely, so you can still make use of it for other utility purposes.

 

↖ Eldritch Battery & Battery Staff

To work around the drawback of Divine Flesh bypassing the energy shield, you can consider utilizing the Eldritch Battery keystone. Eldritch Battery causes your energy shield to protect your mana instead of life, making it a resource for skill costs before mana. With Eldritch Battery, your energy shield will constantly recharge, allowing you to use abilities without interruption. By reserving most or all of your mana pool, you can make use of a Divine Blessing aura. 

 

Eldritch Battery synergizes well with a Battery Staff, a heist-exclusive base that drops from replicas or experimented base types in Grand Heists. The implicit modifier on this staff grants a substantial amount of flat energy shield and causes socketed gems to spend energy shield instead of mana. This can be particularly useful when you have high mana costs for the main ability in your body armour's 6-link setup while still wanting to access a Divine Blessing aura or another skill setup.

 

↖ Upside

Now, let's explore the advantages of Divine Flesh. Firstly, it offers 50% of elemental damage taken as chaos damage. This means that half of all elemental damage you receive will be converted to chaos damage instead. Additionally, Divine Flesh provides a 5% increase in maximum chaos resistance.

 

↖ Effective Elemental Resistance

Divine Flesh introduces a unique twist to elemental resistance mechanics. When you have your resistance capped, this keystone enhances your effective resistance against elemental damage. Half of the elemental damage you take is resisted by your normal elemental resistance, while the other half is resisted by your chaos resistance. The resulting effective resistance for elemental damage is the mean value between the specific elemental resistance and your chaos resistance.

 

Let's illustrate this with an example. Suppose your character is utilizing Divine Flesh with 75 lightning resistance and 80 chaos resistance, and you suffer a hit of 2000 lightning damage. In this scenario, 1000 damage is mitigated by your lightning resistance, leaving you with 250 lightning damage. The remaining half of the damage (1000) is treated as chaos damage and is mitigated by your chaos resistance, resulting in 200 chaos damage. Therefore, the total damage taken in this example is 450, with 77.5% of the damage being mitigated. Consequently, the effective resistance for lightning damage is 77%, which represents the mean value between lightning and chaos resistance.

 

With Divine Flesh, you can further enhance your effective resistance against elemental damage by increasing your maximum chaos resistance. This allows you to become exceptionally resilient against raw chaos damage.

 

↖ Maximum Chaos Resistance

Modifiers that increase maximum chaos resistance are not as abundant as those for maximum elemental resistance. However, there are several resources you can utilize to gain additional maximum chaos resistance. Here are some of them:

• Searing Acquired Body Armor Implicit: Eldritch Embers can provide 1-3% maximum chaos resistance, depending on the tier. Tier 1-2 offers 3%, tier 3-4 grants 2%, and tier 5-6 provides 1%.
• All Maximum Resistances on Shields: By combining the maximum chaos resistance modifier (up to 3%) with the all maximum resistances modifier (up to 2%), you can obtain up to 5% maximum chaos resistance on a shield. Keep in mind that these modifiers have a low weighting, so crafting on a shield with a fractured modifier might be beneficial.
• Chaos Mastery Wheels and Cluster Jewels: Chaos Mastery passives on the passive tree grant 1% maximum chaos resistance. Additionally, there are cluster jewels that offer notable passives, such as Anti-Venom (1% maximum chaos resistance) and Born of Chaos (3% maximum chaos resistance).
• Synthesized Implicit on Gear: Helmets, body armour, quivers, boots, and gloves can potentially have maximum chaos resistance as a synthesized implicit modifier.
• Unique Items: Certain unique items provide maximum chaos resistance, such as Saffell's Frame (4% to all maximum resistances), Gray Spire (up to 4% to all maximum resistances), and Apep's Supremacy (3% to all maximum resistances while poisoned).
• Corrupted Implicit: Body armours and amulets can have 1% to all maximum resistances as a corrupted implicit.

 

↖ Non-Damaging Ailments

Divine Flesh not only improves your effective resistance against elemental damage but also alters the properties of the damage itself. Specifically, it affects non-damaging ailments like shock, chill, and scorch. These ailments are based on damage taken. Since Divine Flesh shifts elemental damage into chaos damage, the portion converted to chaos damage can no longer apply non-damaging ailments by default.

 

For instance, if you're hit by lightning damage that has a chance to shock, and you're using Divine Flesh, half of the damage is taken as chaos damage and can no longer inflict shock. Therefore, the resulting shock from the remaining lightning damage may be reduced. As of now, there are no non-damaging ailments tied to chaos damage, meaning the chaos damage you take cannot inflict any non-damaging ailments.

 

↖ Damaging Ailments

It's important to note that half of the elemental damage you take that is converted to chaos damage also cannot inflict poison by default. Damaging ailments, such as poison, are based on the damage of a hit, not the damage taken. However, if you're hit by fire damage, the full force of the hit can still ignite you, even if half of the damage is converted to chaos damage. Keep this in mind when considering the potential ailment effects of different damage types.

 

↖ Penetration

In addition to ailments, damage types can also have penetration specific to their type. By shifting the damage to be taken as another type (chaos damage), you can avoid damage type-specific penetration for that portion of the damage. For example, if you have Divine Flesh and are hit by a skill that deals 13,000 cold damage with 25% cold penetration, 6,500 damage will be resisted by your cold resistance, while the other 6,500 damage will be resisted by your chaos resistance. Consequently, the cold penetration cannot apply to the chaos damage portion. This makes Divine Flesh a potent defensive mechanism against penetration.

 

However, be cautious of situations where monsters possess global penetration. For instance, in Expeditions, exploding a remnant will grant all monsters a 15% penetration of your chaos resistance. Exposing yourself to this effect allows monsters to penetrate your resistance on the elemental damage they deal to you, so exercise caution when facing such challenges.

 

↖ Synergies

Apart from increasing your maximum chaos resistance, Divine Flesh offers several synergistic mechanics that can greatly enhance your survivability. One notable synergy is with "The Fourth Vowel," a unique body armour introduced in Patch 3.21. This armour has a modifier that allows armour to apply to chaos damage taken from hits. This means that your armour value will be fully applied to chaos damage, providing significant damage reduction.

 

Let's take an example to understand its power. Imagine a character using Divine Flesh with The Fourth Vowel, having 75 lightning resistance, 80 chaos resistance, and 30,000 armour. If hit by an ability that deals 24,000 lightning damage, 12,000 damage would be taken as lightning damage (mitigated by lightning resistance), and the other 12,000 would be taken as chaos damage. With the armour applied, the character would only take 696 chaos damage in total. This showcases how powerful the modifier is when it comes to mitigating elemental damage.

 

To further improve the efficiency of armour application, scaling maximum chaos resistance is recommended since armour is more effective against smaller hits. The Doppelganger Gaze, a Maven-exclusive unique body armour, is another option that can roll up to 40% less physical and chaos damage taken. Unlike The Fourth Vowel, this modifier also affects damage over time, making it valuable against various sources of damage.

 

The Tainted Pact, a new unique amulet introduced in Patch 3.21, provides a unique modifier: chaos damage over time taken while leeching heals you instead. Although this amulet has a high opportunity cost due to occupying the amulet slot, it can be beneficial for builds with high leech uptime. By using Divine Flesh, elemental damage over time is shifted to chaos damage, allowing you to be healed instead of taking damage as long as you are leeching life.

 

Additionally, the new Armor and Energy Shield Mastery applies 10% of your armour to chaos damage taken from hits. This defensive modifier synergizes well with Divine Flesh, especially for Juggernauts utilizing Unbreakable. Since armour is applied separately to each damage type, the combination allows for greater mitigation by splitting the damage and making armour more efficient against smaller portions of damage.

 

↖ Shifting More Damage

Once you have effective ways to mitigate the chaos damage taken, you can consider shifting more damage to chaos. The Incandescent Heart, a unique body armour, has a modifier that converts 25% of elemental damage from hits to chaos damage. When combined with Divine Flesh, 75% of elemental damage can be taken as chaos damage, further improving your effective elemental resistances. By scaling your maximum chaos resistance with this combination, you become highly resilient to elemental damage penetration, avoiding penetration on 75% of the damage.

 

You can also obtain modifiers that shift a significant amount of physical damage taken from hits to chaos damage. For example, a helmet modifier grants 10% of physical damage taken as chaos damage. When paired with an Eater of Worlds Eldritch Implicit on the helmet, up to 18% of physical damage can be taken as chaos damage from the helmet slot alone. Hunter-influenced body armours can also roll similar modifiers, further increasing the amount of physical damage taken as chaos damage.

 

↖ Mahuxotl's Machination

Mahuxotl's Machination is an important shield that grants several keystones, including Divine Flesh. This shield frees up your timeless jewel slot, allowing you to use a Lethal Pride jewel with the "Tempered by War" keystone from the Name of Rakiata. This keystone converts half of all cold and lightning damage taken into fire damage, effectively negating cold and lightning damage altogether. With this setup, you only need to focus on fire and chaos resistances, making elemental penetration from cold and lightning sources irrelevant. It enables you to fully optimize your maximum fire and chaos resistance.

 

Moreover, Mahuxotl's Machination grants a keystone unique to the shield called Everlasting Sacrifice. This keystone sacrifices all of your energy shields to provide a 5% increase to all maximum resistances for four seconds whenever you reach full energy shield. To gain an energy shield, you can use items such as Demon Stitcher unique gloves, which sacrifice a percentage of your life to grant the same amount of energy shield each time you use a spell. The Sorrow of the Divine and Replica Sorrow of the unique Divine flasks can also be used to recover both life and energy shield from flask usage, effectively providing sustain for your energy shield pool.

 

Conclusion:

Divine Flesh is an incredibly powerful keystone that offers inherent properties to deal with elemental penetration and non-damaging ailments. By combining it with various mechanics, you can create extremely durable builds capable of withstanding even the most dangerous boss abilities in the game. With the right synergies, you can mitigate elemental damage effectively, shift damage to chaos, and optimize your maximum resistances for both fire and chaos damage.