PoE 3.11 - Arcanist Brand Ball Lightning Necromancer - Full Build Guide

WELCOME TO MY 3.11 ARCANIST BRAND BALL LIGHTNING NECROMANCER BUILD -----------------OVERVIEW------------------------------ Brands? Ball Lightning? Why Necromancer? Two Words: Corpse Pact. The build works by (ab)using the Eye of Innocence amulet and CWDT loops to consume our way through as many as 52 corpses per second. We only need to consume at least 25 corpses per second to max out the 200% cast speed bonus from the Corpse Pact Ascendancy node. If we look at the gem text on Arcanist Brand we see: "Increases and Reductions to Cast Speed also apply to this Skill's Activation frequency". This will allow us to reach an activation frequency of 6-7 casts per second, and since these are all individual casts of Ball Lightning they CAN shotgun enemies resulting in over 60 HITS PER SECOND against a single target. So even though we only have a single damage support on Ball Lightning, we can stack flat damage and gem levels to get to high DPS numbers. By having a flat amount of fire damage added to spells (from Ngamahu's sign) and a ~75% chance to ignite we can easily generate enough self-damage from the Eye of Innocence to trigger the CWDT chains which will auto-consume corpses to make use of Corpse Pact WARNING, THERE BE MATH AHEAD Every time CWDT triggers, we consume 13 corpses (9 Volatile Dead, 3 Detonate Dead, 1 Cremation). This means we need to trigger CWDT at least 2 times a second to max out Corpse Pact. This means we will need to take 1056 damage per second. A 20% quality (Turbulent Catalyst) Eye of Innocence will cause 120 fire damage, reduced to 30 with 75% fire res, per ignite. So if we can ignite enemies at a rate of 35.2 times per second then we can max out our corpse generating. So our goal is to get as close as we can to 50 hits per second and a 75% chance to ignite. Between Ball Lightning, Cremation, and Volatile Dead...and a little ignite investment on the tree...this is something we can accomplish. How many times are we actually hitting with Ball Lightning? With at least 90% increased AoE, a Ball Lightning fired from a stationary monster will remain in-range of that enemy for at least 0.6 seconds. This means we will get a hit at 0.00, 0.15, 0.30, 0.45, and 0.60 seconds after cast. Getting to an activation rate of 6 casts per second means we are getting 6*5=30 hits per second per brand. With Runebinder this is doulbed to 60 hits per second on single target. If we get activation up to 7 casts per second then we jump up to 70 hits per second. At 70 hits per second, with an average hit of 50k against Shaper, this would put the build at a theoretical 3.5 mil Shaper DPS when fully wound up. While that's not insane by any means, single target is actually this builds weak spot. The clear is fantastic and being able to get that much single target out of a build that clears this well feels great. Special note about knockback: if you work in knockback somewhere on your cluster/jewels, you can actually end up kocking enemies back and causing them to travel with the ball lightning orbs resulting in even more damage, plus it's funny. ----------------REQUIRED GEAR----------------------------- Amulet: Eye of Innocence - absolutely central to the build Rings x2: Ngamahu's Sign - one ring, rolled to 30 life recovery, will completely counter the damage we take from the amulet. TWO rings will actually heal us every time we ignite an enemy, which I remind you, can be up to 35 times per second. That's over 1000 instant life recovery every second. Gloves: Shaper influenced with -Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 20 Slower Projectiles- While a level 20 is not required it is HIGHLY recommended See the gear section for squeezing everything out of the glove slot. Slap a +1 AoE gems craft on those bad boys as well. A Harvest crafting guide for the S tier gloves is further down in these notes. That's it for the required stuff. Other recommended gear: Inpulsa's Broken Heart - since we only need a 5L in the chest slot (6 is still better but not needed), an Inpulsa is not as expensive a choice as you would think, especially with 5 links being pretty much free to harvest this league. The build will still clear just fine on any life/res rare chest however. Thread of Hope - Very Large Ring - this straight up saves 5 passive points on the tree and gives immediate access to 13% worth of life nodes, great bang for the buck 24% Ball Lightning AoE helm - Ball Lightning will sneak in an extra hit at 90% increased AoE, this really helps to get there. Harvest crafting guide for an S Tier helm below Tailwind Boots - these are so easy to self craft this leage it would be silly not to make a pair. ----------------PASSIVE TREE NOTES------------------------- This build will be a little Dex starved, luckily we path right next to PRACTICAL APPLICATION and AGILITY which will give 65 Dex for 3 points of investment. As mentioned in the gear section, you will also want to try and hit a total of 90% increased area of effect to get an extra hit out of Ball Lightning. We path right by the BLAST RADIUS and AMPLIFY clusters so we have plenty of AoE readily available to grab. The Plague Bringer Ascendancy + 24% helm enchant + glove craft gets us to 64% already so we don't need much more to get there. Also, different trees are provided for different situations, checkout the tree list to see what fits best for you. ----------------CLUSTER JEWELS--------------------------- For this build, Supercharge can be a big chunk of DPS, like 20% more damage huge. If you can find an 8 passive/3 notable with Supercharge then go for it, regardless of what the other two Notables are. For the medium cluster, Brand Loyalty helps with single target and Holy Conquest Helps with clear. I haven't tested much around these though and better options might be out there. Let me know if you find anything you like! ----------------LEVELING------------------ No specific leveling guide will be provided, yet, although example progression trees are listed in the tree menu. You can level easy enough as a self caster using unleash Arc for clear and unleash Ball Lightning for single target. Build can be swapped at level 68 which is when you can equip the Eye of Innocence amulet. For Ascendancy order, I would grab Commander of Darkness first, the generic +% damage and elemental resistances will help out no mater how you level. Then grab Plague Bringer next because you want to grab Corpse Pact 3rd, Corpse Pact is required to get the build up and running. Get uber lab and Mistress of Sacrifice as soon as you can as the max block with Glancing Blows and life gain on hit from Bone Offering is great for staying alive. ------------------GEM NOTES------------------------ If you do happen to have a 6th link availble in the chest slot, I recommend three options. Firestorm - go with this if you feel like you're not getting enough ignites and want to ramp up the CWDT triggering Culling Strike - This would be the choice if your ignite chance is good, you have a nice Conductivity on Hit wand, and you want smoother bossing Blade Blast (level 7 max) - This would be the choice if your ignite chance is good but you do not have a Conductivity on Hit wand ---------------------PANTHEON----------------------- I prefer Soul of the Brine King to keep from getting stun locked and Soul of Gruthkul. Since we are constantly taking hits from the amulet, Gruthkul's phys reduction is always at max. But this is really up to preference. Watch out for anything with "if you haven't been hit recently", because of the hits we take from the amulet, we will always "have been hit recently". -----------------HARVEST CRAFTING----------------------- GLOVES I recommend buying a pair with level 20 Slower Projectiles and any level Faster Cating on the gloves already, get one with an open prefix if you can so you can craft +1 AoE gems. Other than that, if you want to go for the big daddy S Tier gloves, here's how you do it. STEP 1) Get a pair of ilvl 84 or higer Shaper influence Fingerless Silk Gloves - if you're going to sink currency into an item, go for the best base. STEP 2) This is actually the hard part, we need to spam Essence of Insanity on the gloves and hit level 20 Slower Projectiles STEP 3) Now we need to get two open suffixes, or only one open suffix if you hit the "% chance to Avoid interruption from Stuns while Casting" mod. STEP 4) Use Harvest crafting to ADD A CASTER MOD, if you get Faster Casting then congrats, you win. Otherwise: STEP 5) If you got fire/cold dot multi instead, remove them with a remove fire/cold harvest craft. If you got "Socketed Spells deal % crit multi" you can remove this with a remove crit mod craft. STEP 6) Try STEP 4 again, thankfully Faster Casting has a high weighting and should not be hard to hit. The hardest part will be step 2 and 3. There are only 5 possible CASTER suffixes that the gloves can roll. The stun avoid while casting mentioned above, Fire DoT multi, Cold DoT multi, socketed spell +% multi, and the level Faster Casting mod we want. The fire/cold DoT multi can be removed with a standard remove fire/cold harvest craft and the socketed spell multi can be removed with a remove crit harvest craft. This leaves us with only one mod we can not guarantee removal on, the stun avoidance. So if we end up with stun avoidance it's ok since we have another open suffix to work with HELMET This one is much easier to do, you will probably need a Crusader's Exalted Orb to do it however. A Bone Helmet is the obvious choice but it can be a rare/expensive base to find. STEP 1) Get an ilvl 85 or higher helm with the 24% Ball Lightning AoE enchant, the item must have no influence or Crusader's influence only. If the helm already has Crusader Influence then skip to STEP 4 STEP 2) Roll the helm with some good life and resistances, no open prefixes, and one open suffix. STEP 3) SLAM with that Crusader Exalt and hope for "Nearby Enemies have -9% to Lightning Resistance", if you don't get it then: STEP 4) Hit the helm with high tier life essences or craft normally until you have these three things: A high life roll, lightning resistance, no open prefixes, at least one open suffix. STEP 5) Since the only remaining Lightning suffix that can be hit is "Nearby Enemies have -9% to Lightning Resistance" all we have to do it Harvest craft with an add lightning mod craft and we're done! -----------------OTHER NOTES/WHERE TO FIND ME-------------------- This build is very effect heavy and will strain both computers and servers, getting the Volatile Dead MTX is recommended as it's much easier on the eyes. Certain situations that are dense with high HP mobs, like late level Simulacrums/big Harvests/Allies Cannot Die packs; are going to be very hard on the servers for this build and you will come to a stutter. Other than the normal map mods you avoid, like elemental reflect, consider skipping "Monsters have 70% chance to Avoid Elemental Ailments" as this slows down the build quite a bit. You can still manage them but they are a pain especially if you don't have an Inpulsa. If you have any questions or comments about the build you can find me on: Youtube: TrollErgoSum Reddit: TrollErgoSum Twitch: TrollErgoSum (I don't stream but you can find me there) PoE Forums: BigFingersMcGee I'm always happy to answer questions and give advice! Thanks for taking the time to check out my build, TrollErgoSum