[3.29] 4 Stone Mana-Infused Staff Archmage Hierophant

Be Prepared for lots of Lab Shock Nova of Procession What I wanted to use this time Frostblink of Wintery Blast Prefered movement with Staves Leap Slam felt bad without attack speed investment Lightning warp didnt feel great without leveled gems You can use other skills as well, Vortex of Projection and Ball Lightning of Orbiting are some I know off the top of my head. Going Mana Infused Staff is a choice between raw damage or mana sustain It pretty much cuts your mana cost in half You lose about 30% damage compared to eternal blessing wrath You have to swap to inspiration as a support gem Mana sustain is really bad By having good mana sustain you can rely on MoM more consistently Helps cap block 60/80 without block mod on staff, 75/80 with crafted attack block mod Mana man usually had a great max hit but rather poor avoidance without a great necrotic + grace Mana-Infused Staff damage with Overcharge support did allow for brief periods of 50% shock which is pretty good tbh It also had decent uptime of innverate during mapping but its not a huge damage boost for SNoP With enough damage scaling it could be good but it doesnt seem to get much I think its worth as a league start damage was good enough to get 4 stones Once you get an amulet with the 10% to recover 10% mana mod eternal blessing wrath raw mana regen might be good enough Other options like vaal clarity and laviagna's arent as great in prolonged boss fights but with enough damage they are good options Most of my deaths were due to either chaos damage or being bursted down by mobs I solved the being bursted down by going Divine Shield and getting attack block up Chaos res is pretty gear dependant, I could have taken the Asylum cluster by MoM but that costs 3 points I also had a few deaths from testing the waters on some boss attacks (Shaper's Slam, Elder Blasts, etc) Damage for bossing was a tad underwhelming PoB damage I think assumes all 8 overlaps, realistic is probably 5-7 overlaps I might come back to this character to try other skills Damage was pretty much fine for basic t16 mapping My staff was pretty cracked and it came from gambling It was about 30% damage over my ideal baseline staff (% damage, mana, cast speed) I was debating if I should allow it or not but ultimatly decided to use it Random rambling of my rules/goals of a run This run was not meant for speed/rushing once I hit maps. I want to have more consistent practice where I still try to go fast but I dont want to sacrifice gear for the sake of rushing. Things I'm restricting during a run for consistency Annoints Clusters T3+ Uniques 6 Links Eldritch Implicits Crafting aside from alt + regal Kingsmarch Jewels My Endgoals for a build Get to 1 Stone If I'm not loving a build I will stop here Get to 4 stones, Level 90 and complete all yellow/white map objectives This helps mitigate rng of guardian maps by having a min level requirement White and Yellow maps are easy to finish compared to red map My current early progression approach Merc Lab for 20% qual on main skill/Trans gems (if applicable) Rush to yellow maps Fill out white/yellow map objectives while progressing map tiers If feeling strong go to red maps If feeling weak stay in yellow maps Do non objective red maps to each of the 4 corners for voidstones Do Eagon questlines while progressing Voidstone Order Eater/Exarch -> Dread -> Shaper/Elder -> Maven Atlas Strats Atlas 1 High Map Chance Atlas 2 Why? Racing is good but for me I want consistency Progressing too fast means death, death means back to the beach in gauntlet I enjoy gauntlets and part of this is for practice for gauntlet