A Build Lost in Time

I want to finish a map as fast as possible with as much as Herald of Ash explosions, always striving for that kinda builds in this game. I was looking for fast mappers again and stumbled upon Palsteron's Lightning Warp Elementalist, I did play this build in several leagues ago but decided to try it again.

This build was so much better back then. We had the Lightning Warp duration enchant on the helmet, and solving the mana situation was much easier. Now we’ve lost the helm enchant, we’ve lost reduced mana cost, and a lot of the things that made this build work smoothly are gone. Good old days.

The first thing I had to solve was getting Lightning Warp’s duration down to zero. Palsteron also explains this in his video, but you need 100% reduced skill duration. You can get 56% of that by socketing a Level 21 Lightning Warp into Poet’s Pen together with a Level 4 Empower. The remaining reduction comes from the Window of Opportunity cluster and Timeclasp.

The next step is getting enough Cooldown Recovery Rate. You need at least 152% CDR, or possibly 153% — I still don't fully understand where the exact breakpoint comes from.

Poet’s Pen has a base cooldown of 0.25 seconds, but when Lightning Warp is socketed into it, the Increased Cooldown Recovery of Movement Skills modifier also affects its cooldown. I reach 152% CDR by using Haste with the appropriate Watcher’s Eye mod, which gives 50% CDR, then stacking Power Charges and using Badge of the Brotherhood, which gives another 90% CDR. The remaining CDR comes from my boots and Bound by Destiny.

If you think that's everything you need to make the build work, you're mistaken.

Now you have to solve the attack speed problem and get your Effective Trigger Rate to exactly 10.1.

I tested a ridiculous number of combinations, and I eventually found that I needed exactly an 8% Attack Speed roll on Poet’s Pen, 211% Increased Attack Speed from Frenzy, and 72% More Attack Speed from the Frenzy gem itself.

I honestly don't fully understand the mechanics behind why these exact numbers work. I just know that they do. If anyone understands the math behind this interaction better, I'd genuinely love to know why this combination hits the required trigger rate so precisely.

And then there's the mana problem.

With Lightning Warp triggering at 10.1 times per second, the mana cost becomes absolutely insane. To deal with that, I went with Eldritch Battery + Mind over Matter.

Is this build tanky? No.

Does it deal amazing damage? Not really.

But watching everything explode while cosplaying Zeus is exactly why I love this build.

I really wish we had more ways to reduce Lightning Warp's duration. I wish there were more CDR nodes on the tree, and I genuinely don't understand why reduced mana cost was removed. This build used to be so much easier to put together. Cast on Crit builds and trigger builds are one of my favorite archetypes, it's sad to see the state they are in.

Here is my PoB (not final): https://pobb.in/erXWQjj0yCys

I definitely do not recommend anyone trying this build. It is ridiculously expensive to put together, and the amount of damage you get in return simply isn't worth the investment.