Showcase video
Disclaimer - the build isn't any good for end-game content and has about 100K dps on sirus (according to PoB). It is fun nonetheless and has some ideas I wanted to share.
Here is a PoB: https://pastebin.com/YNpJ0kWL
First, the self-damage loop. I used 2xStorm Secret ring, each deals 250 lightning damage each time herald of thunder hits something + it makes that herald hit faster. With perfect rolls it would result in 4K lightning dmg before reductions, I got only 3.6K, which is still plenty. With 75% lightning res this let's one trigger CWDT lvl 20 every 3.6 seconds (3.27 seconds best case).
Now since we can't fire spells very often, I decided to go with cold dot spells - creeping frost, vortex, cold snap. With increased skill effect duration from the tree creeping frost can last 8 seconds, so with GMP we can have 10 chilling areas at all times.
Now to mitigate self-damage I use Graven's Secret unique belt - it replaces power charges (which do nothing for dot dmg) with "Absorption" charges, where each charge gives you 12% of elemental damage taken recouped as energy shield. With only 4 charges it's already 48% recouped, with 8 it would be 96%. I currently got 4 max power charges + steelskin + vitality via zealot's oath and can sustain the damage.
When comes a question how to generate power charges without PCoC. In retrospect the answer should have been Malachai's Loop unique shield, which gives +2 maximum power charges and 20% chance to gain a power charge on hit, so we would generate 1 charge every 0.63 seconds on average - it also no longer gets the downside, since we now use absorption charges. However I didn't do that. I decided to go with Fenumus' Toxins unique circlet, which states "10% chance to gain a Power Charge on hitting an Enemy affected by a Spider's Web".
That implied I also needed Fenumus' Weave gloves to get aspect of the spider. Then I decided to get the full set of Fenumus things - I got Fenumus' Spinnerets boots and Fenumus' Shroud robe. The robe has ES regen, "Enemies affected by your Spider's Webs deal 10% reduced Damage" and "Enemies affected by your Spider's Webs have -10% to All Resistances", while boots have ~20% chaos res, 25% ms, and es oh hit (which triggers from herald of thunder). Overall quite a nice set of armour.
With all these uniques I had two weapons and amulet slots open to cover missing attributes and resists. I got Astramentis for attributes and a wand + shield with about 55% fire and cold res each.
That covers the gear. Here is the list for TLDR:
(pricewise it's 1-2 ex altogether)
Now for the link setup:
CWDT links:
-
creeping frost + cwdt + GMP + hypothermia + controlled destruction + arcane surge lvl 12
-
vortex, cold snap + cwdt + bonechill
Active skills:
Auras:
Discipline with arrogance and "30% increased life reservation efficiency of skills" reserves bit less than 54% of life, which puts us at low life and lets us use pain attunement.
The tree is mostly just grabbing life, aura reservation efficiency and cold dot dmg. One interesting node to grab is Infused flesh, which together with two small nodes leading to it give 30% damage recouped as life. The reasoning is the following: since we use Zealot's Oath we don't get to regen life, and chaos dmg just from poison / caustic ground becomes quite a pain. However recoup counts as life recovery, hence is not affected by ZO. So taking this node adds a bit of fail-safe against chaos dmg.
As for ascendancy I got Elementalist with Shaper of storms, Shaper of winter, Mastermind of discord and Heart of destruction. Occultist might have been better, but then one needs to make sure one has ways of shocking enemies to trigger herald of thunder.
Overall the build is really fun to play, you run around, mobs are webbed and chilled and can't get you at all - same with bosses :)
P.S. I used a t8 map for showcase, since I'm not sure how much further this build can go.
