I believe Storm Call is getting quite a nice buff, especially with the extra gem quality we are getting. Storm Call's quality is a % chance to instantly strike the marker when you cast. This is hugely beneficial, not just for multiplicative damage, but the huge QoL it provides by giving the build instant damage on a skill that normally has delayed damage. The build using Ashes of the Stars is going to go from 37% chance to deal a strike instantly to 45%, which should feel great, as well as a huge buff on the cast speed, going from 0.5 to 0.4 and ~13% more damage from gem levels.

I went ahead and looked over the 3.26 pob of the build I played and did my best to update it for 3.29 for others to look at, I'm curious if there's any obvious things I could use for the build that I'm missing.

I only have an endgame POB since I probably won't be league starting another elementalist, just a bit tired of her. It's got fairly good gear on it, but no mageblood/headhunter, and pretty much all of the gear on it is very similar to the gear I crafted in 3.26.

Pre-3.29 Endgame POB: https://pobb.in/3P-1FDaE2N1Y

Some gems are set to 30 quality for socket color buff, skill gem buffs/quality in config.

There is a way to get a lot of extra AoE if you decide to use Assert Dominance on your medium clusters, however it is conditional on killing and much harder to craft, I'm taking advantage of the fact that Magnifier is the only crit mod on area clusters which makes them easy to make via harvest crit reforge (this allows us to mass produce them for good corruptions, namely % inc aoe and corrupted blood immunity). We do have access to Mark of Penance which can summon monsters on bosses to trigger Assert Dominance, but we give up a lot to do it, not sure if it's quite worth.

Background

Back in patch 3.26 I wanted to try out some tech I heard about for Storm Call. I heard that if you got enough AoE, say around 275% and higher with a level 27+ Storm Call (it gains base radius with levels), Storm Call will start overlapping so that your target will get hit by all 5 markers. That was with Awakened Spell Cascade, Greater Spell Cascade is very similar, actually slightly better, so the principal still works.

The inspiration I had in 3.26 was when golems had their buffs massively improved, namely Flame Golem which gives 20% inc aoe which can be scaled up with buff effect. It worked really well once I was able to find enough aoe to overlap Storm Call.

Gameplay Video: 3.26 abyss farm, tanky monster mods, 48% less defenses, marked for death

Note: my merc was nearly doubling my clear damage, he was setup as a curse support, cursing everything, and providing me Haste, build is going to be a little bit slower than seen and must trigger curses yourself, but I believe it should still be solid with the buffs.