When GGG announced that they were making buffs to self casting, specifically the "effectiveness of added damage" portion of several spell skills, I decided I would try out a true self casting build.

I ended up with crackling lance Inquisitor, and I am writing this blog post because my character has been an amazing success, and because I've come across some interactions that I've been dying to share with people.

If I'm feeling ambitious, I might write out a full "guide" in the comments section. However, I decided that this post needs to get straight to point and outline some of the key interactions that I think people are sleeping on. I'm not writing this to explain how to make "my" character. But to demonstrate how to adapt these mechanics to a variety of builds. I, for instance, am primarily a lighting spell caster, but this post will demonstrate how other forms of elemental damage can be utilized.

Here's the POB: https://pastebin.com/N8GsD2Wc

Follow along as I cover the interactions between the passive tree and my items. If you already understand the concept, feel free to skip to the next topic.

• Instruments of Virtue AKA Battlemage

Let's start with Instruments of Virtue, the ascendancy which gives us Battlemage. Used correctly, this will give a MASSIVE damage boost, and should probably be your first lab choice when leveling. Even if the build your planning will ultimately not use battlemage in it's endgame version, you will probably still want this node for leveling and early maps.

I've tried to maximize this node's potential by getting as much flat added damage on my weapon as possible. A few things people might not notice: First, the added damage from battle mage only applies to the main hand weapon. So, if you're dual wielding, your two weapons will be radically different. Your off hand weapon will be generic caster mods.

Second, notice that the weapon I've chosen has added elemental damage from BOTH fire and cold, as well as lightning damage. This is counterintuitive, given that my skill is entirely lightning based (crackling lance). I didn't plan on this, per se, but it works. If you look at the "calcs" page on my POB, you can see that the % increased damage figure for my build is nearly as high for the other two elements as it is for lightning damage. Most of the damage from my passive tree is "spell", "elemental", "AOE", and ultimately, comes from critical strikes. These scale nearly as well with the added fire and cold damage.

There are some limitations to this, and further optimizations you could make. This wouldn't work well with the old EE, and if you tried to fit EE into your build, this would be a bad idea. Your choice of curse could be affected. Should you choose conductivity or elemental weakness? It may depend on the weapon you're using, the skill you've chosen, or any damage conversions you chose to make. It may also affect which damage nodes on the passive tree you chose. Because of the weapons I have, (both the dual wielding and the 2 handed weapon, which I was using before the upgrade I made) I've chosen not to pursue a few lightning damage nodes that I would have otherwise taken: Heart of Thunder and Crackling Speed.

Taken to its optimal conclusion, you may be interested in trying to work Trinity Support into your build. I won't get into the details of that skill gem here, but if you understand it, you can see how it may be optimal to select a weapon with flat added damage that is DIFFERENT than the element your skill is using. Alternatively, you could work in a Call of the Brotherhood, or some other form of PARTIAL damage conversion. You may even consider simply swapping out Added Lightning Damage Support, for a gem like Added Cold Damage. I point this out because it may be counterintuitive for you to use a lighting spell skill and then scale a different element. But it's becoming a central part of a lot of ele damage builds, and Battlemage gives you a new option for trinity scaling.

Third, it should be noted that the weapon's physical damage is added through battlemage as well. I ultimately used weapons that were high in flat added ele damage, but simply getting a weapon with high physical damage was an option. This actually would work synergistically with a LOT of unique weapons in POE. Consider maces: they generally have astronomical local % increased physical damage rolls, but they're offset but very low attack speeds. But battlemage doesn't care about attack speed; you're casting spells remember? So unique maces like Callinellus Malleus give you all the benefits of the high physical damage, without the downsides of a low attack speed. There are several weapons like this which may be worth investigating if you take battlemage. I'll list them below.

If you go with a phys weapon, this may affect which skill you chose to play with. I chose crackling lance, which is based in lightning damage. Physical based spells with elemental conversion, such as Divine Ire, along with [physical to lightning support](https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Physical_to_Lightning_Support], would make 100% use of your weapon's physical damage. There is also a lightning mastery which converts 40% of your physical damage to lightning.

By now, you may also notice that searching for these weapons on trade with be complicated. Mainly, you're looking for high damage... NOT high DPS. You don't care how fast the weapon attacks are. In fact, an optimized weapon will have CAST SPEED on it.... not high ATTACK SPEED. I've found that it's best to use the weapon filters on the trade search: put in a high DPS number (say, 700 minimum for 2 handed, 400 minimum for 1 handed), and then put a MAXIMUM number in the attacks per second window (say 1.25). This filters out all the weapons like Brightbeak, whose DPS is almost entirely reliant on the high attack time.

From that list you'll still want to prioritize spell casting mods: increased cast speed, increased critical strike chance for spells, increased crit multi, spell damage. The 2 handed sword in my POB was my main weapon for a LONG time. I bought it for 1c.

You'll notice a lot of weapons that are typically out of the templar's wheelhouse. Daggers? Axes? These are strange weapons that very few players are able to make use of. Battlemage is huge niche in the market. All else remaining equal, staffs are probably best in slot for 2 handed. And dual wielding maces, wands, or daggers (believe it or not), are probably the most damage otherwise. It's really hard to justify a shield, because your main hand weapon is just a gigantic source of added spell damage. Your off hand needs to have all the caster mods which couldn't fit on your main hand.

Finally, consider the theme that GGG is going for here: this section of the Inquisitor ascendancy is looking to build synergy between attacks and spells. I know that a lot of people would consider their attempt to be a failure. But don't write it off completely as we shift focus to another ascendancy: Instruments of Zeal, AKA Fanaticism.

First though, here is a list of unique weapons which I found intriguing when planning my battlemage build:

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Callinellus_Malleus

I've explained this one

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Brain_Rattler

High physical damage, built in elemental conversion, and some shock scaling. It should be noted that 2 handed weapons do not need to be 6 linked to be useful.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Debeon%27s_Dirge

This axe has high added cold damage and a unique scaling opportunity with warcries. It could be useful with glacial cascade, or two Call of the Brotherhood rings. If you choose a different spell skill, make sure it is one that has high "effectiveness of added damage". GGG's latest manifesto listed all the buffs to spells, and some skills are over the top. Fireball, for instance, is over 300%, I believe. With Cold to Fire support and Trinity support, this is very scalable.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Vulconus

This dagger has high phys and fire damage, and I've seen at least one streamer using it for another build. A phys or fire spell will work. You can proc bleeding with an attack. As we will see with instrument of zeal, your attacks can offer plenty of other benefits.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Brutus%27_Lead_Sprinkler

I was drawn to this weapon because of the other Inquisitor ascendancy, which makes use of strength stacking: Righteous Providence. Unfortunately, the added fire damage will NOT apply to spells through battlemage. Unless POB is mistaken.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Martyr_of_Innocence

This weapon is begging to be used with spells, due to the fact that the ascendancy is part of the item itself! You don't have to be an inquisitor to make use of battlemage. However, as an inquisitor, this item could still function as a budget Forbidden Flesh/Flame mechanic. Using it would allow you to chose an additional ascendancy.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Cane_of_Kulemak

This item varies drastically based on the decisions of the person choosing the veiled mods. If one is listed for cheap, it may be a bricked version that doesn't work for other builds. HOWEVER, battlemage is incredibly niche, and it's not unheard of to find this weapon while searching for hybrid caster/attack damage weapons.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Oni-Goroshi

Similar to Brutus Lead Sprinkler, this weapon's added damage unfortunately does NOT show up on spells through battlemage.... again according to POB. (which isn't perfect!)

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Rebuke_of_the_Vaal

An obvious choice for battlemage, which others have discussed. This weapon is probably one of the many budget options to get your build into yellow maps.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Hyaon%27s_Fury

Another budget weapon. Not much scaling, and is only a little bit more powerful than an Awakened Added Lightning Damage Support gem.

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Surging_Thoughts

An upgraded version of Rippling thoughts. This weapon us a complete mystery to me. You get a Savior like minion which grants you caster buffs, like arcane surge and lightning penetration. It ALSO gives a triggered spell (storm cascade).

Moving on to the next ascendancy:

• Instruments of Zeal, AKA Fanaticism

You may have seen many negative reviews regarding Inquisitor's fanaticism. Their complaints are true in part, but also owing to a misunderstanding of the mechanic's role in combat. Again, I won't be giving a tutorial on how the node works. Others have explained it. Basically, if you attack enough times, you get fanaticism. You don't have to hit enemies. Leap slamming into the ground next to you is enough.

The limiting factor with fanaticism is apparent once you start to use it: you have 4 seconds to cast as many spells as you can. During the time you're casting spells, you are NOT attacking. Therefore, once the buff runs out, you probably are several seconds of vital combat time away from being able to proc it again, and you will be busy performing attacks during this time.

Many players will feel frustrated because during this 4 second window, you probably will wish to cast other spells to ramp up your damage. Players drop Orb of Storms at their feet, spam their flasks, cast Sigil of power, hydrosphere, or they curse enemies before finally hitting them with their spells.

Fanaticism exerts a pressure on players to limit the amount of "prep work" that goes into a big burst of spell damage. After allocating fanaticism, my style of combat changed, as it's supposed to. The proper way to compare whether fanaticism is "worth it" or not, is to compare the power gained from fanaticism with all the power lost from your various utility setups.

My experience adjusting to fanaticism:

My setup before Fanaticism involved an Orb of storms with Conductivity curse on hit, and power charge on crit. My movement skill was Flame dash, with arcane surge and onslaught. Sigil of power occasionally.

So, that is 5 sources of damage, each procced regularly. (the burning ground from flame dash was enough to have onslaught without a flask). Afterwards, I needed leap slam to gain fanaticism, which meant dropping flame dash. I was able to gain onslaught through a silver flask, but I lost the ability to regularly proc arcane surge. Orb of storms remained unchanged. I still cast it before crackling lance, and it eats up about 1/2 a second of time into my fanaticism. (the flasks are spammed while I'm still in the air, leap slamming). Sigil of power is relegated to bosses only.

What did I lose? reliable sources of arcane surge and onslaught. What did I gain? Fanaticism. Was it worth it? Yes, clearly.

The combined damage boost of arcane surge and onslaught is 10% more damage, and 20% cast speed. Fanaticism gives 75% more damage, and 75% cast speed. Even if you only get it about 1/4th of the time you're dealing damage, it still compares favorably.

Eventually, I was able to invest 3 passive points into Arcane Capacitor and have a semi reliable arcane surge back into the build. Onslaught was brought back immediately through the flask. So what am I actually losing again? Oh yea, sigil of power while clearing magic mobs.... and one flask slot.

For many builds, 75% more damage and cast speed is probably the difference between killing end-game bosses, and using up all 6 portals and failing. My advice: get rid of your quicksilver flask. Every time you need to escape, you also want to be gaining fanaticism charges. Just leap slam everywhere. Fanaticism gives you roughly 3 seconds of real time, mega burst damage.... maybe every 15 seconds. And you always have it during an archnemesis recipe, or an essence, or map boss.

This explains the offensive utiltiy of Fanaticism. But wait! There's more??? Yes, fanaticism DOES have a defensive component. If only you weren't too blind to see it.....

Fanaticism reduces the mana costs of spells by 75%. As I'll explain later, you're probably aura capped, reserving an uncomfortably large amount of mana. Many times I've tried and failed to figure out a way to get Determination into my build.

Interestingly, the support gem "Divine Blessing" changes auras from RESERVING mana, to COSTING mana. For most characters, this is a worthless distinction, because no one has HALF their mana available to cast a spell anyways. Archmage/MoM characters are using their mana pool for offensive and defensive scaling. Other spell casters are trying to get by with 100 mana or less unreserved. Who can spend 900+ mana for an 8 second determination aura?

You can. Because during fanaticism, your determination skill.... linked to divine blessing, now has 75% reduced mana costs.

Obviously, this could be done with other auras.... Zealotry, Wrath, Anger, Hatred, Grace, etc.

As I'll explain later, most auras are permanent for a reason. The massive damage from inquisitor leaves you needing defenses, so my auras are entirely defensive. But it's a matter of personal choice.

The point is, Fanaticism gives you a free aura for 8 seconds, for the price of two gem slots, and about 150 unreserved mana.

As a matter of organization: I've covered two ascendancies which primarily deal with the offensive components uniquely available to the Inquisitor. Very few people utilize this tree of the Inquisitor ascendancy. Next we're moving on to the defensive characteristics, primarily rooted in the Pious Path and Sanctuary ascendancies. But first, we'll take a quick detour to look at the rest of the ascendancy nodes.

• Righteous Providence and Inevitable judgement AKA the Crit nodes.

Righteous Providence is self explanatory, (this isn't a build guide, believe it or not) and completely viable as an ascendancy option. I've taken it, and scaled it through Astramentis but little else. On the margin, I try and get strength or dexterity on the passive tree, in jewel slots, or on gear. It's quaint. Rustic.

Inevitable Judgement is most likely fool's gold, especially without proper build planning. Other's have described the drawbacks of ignoring enemy resistances, when there is so much room in your build to get elemental penetration and exposure. I've got minimum exposure of 18% through the elemental mastery, and I apply it using my gloves, which have an enchant from the lesser eldritch ichor. You can buff it to 25% if you put Wave of Conviction on your CWDT set up. Conductivity gives 44% reduction. My weapons, plus Divine Wrath (passive tree on the far right elemental wheel) penetrate 11%.

You're losing all of that if you ignore elemental resistances. Meanwhile, you're using either a mark skill, or enfeeble/temporal chains. They're not bad options, but curses aren't our wheelhouse. You'll have zero help from your ascendancy or skill tree scaling the curse/mark. Conductivity doesn't need to be scaled, because it's effective enough at doing its job of clearing the hurdle of enemy resistances, which are mostly moderate.

A good rule of thumb: try not to fight against your character's archetype.

• Augury of Penitence AKA the catch all ascendancy

Those who understand this ascendancy's defensive benefit and how it has negative synergy with raising maximum ele resistances, can skip this portion.

Offensively: when nearby enemies "take % increased damage" this is functionally equivalent to your character dealing that same % as "MORE" damage. Others have explained this, and this isn't a build guide... yet.

Defensively: the mechanic of PoE REQUIRE that your character be resistance capped... at 75% resistances. For every 100 lightning damage, you're supposed to take 25, and resist 75.

Raising your maximum lightning resistance by 1% means you only take 24 damage in this example. 24/25 = 96%. Conversely 1/25 = 4%.

So if you raise your maximum elemental resistance by 1%.... from 75% to 76%.... you take 4% less elemental damage. Raising it by 2% (from 75 to 77) means you would take 8% less damage than you would have at the default max resistance cap.

Functionally, taking 8% less elemental damage is the same as raising your maximum elemental resistances from 75% to 77%.

This ascendancy offers decent defense, but it gets weaker if you're already raising your maximum resistances. Let's say your max res was 98%. For every 100 lighting damage, you take 2 damage. Raising your maximum lighting resistance by 1% in this example means you now have 99% resistance and only take 1 damage. 1/2 = 50%. Conversely, 1/2 = 50% So if we start off at such high elemental resistances, raising them by 1% (from 98 to 99) mean you took 50% less damage.

So 8% less damage is decent at 75 max res. It's worth less as your max resistances get higher. Conversely, it becomes more helpful with maps that lower your max resistances by 10%.

Now: on to the defensive nodes:

• Sanctuary and Pious Path AKA the Consecrated ground nodes

These nodes combine to give you easy access to a very juicy consecrated ground. Consecrated ground offers some of the highest regeneration in the game. I'll repost a comment I made earlier in a thread, where I explained why regeneration is useful, and how best to scale it, and augment it:

You have to understand the Inquisitor's defensive strength: it's regeneration. Not necessarily mitigation (armor/suppression), or avoidance (block/evasion). You're supposed to absorb damage. You're supposed to be getting massive amounts of ES as well as life regeneration from consecrated ground. When you've depleted your ES pool, your life and Energy shield are supposed to be regenerating at the SAME TIME, giving 7.5% life and ES per second. If your life and ES are the same amount, that's equal to 15% of total hitpoints regenerated per second. It should be noted that this ascendancy allows ALL % life regen to be applied to your energy shield... not just the life regen you get from consecrated ground itself. The "Shaper" node on the tree granting 1% life regen? Yes, that is now also ES regen.

Therefore, you probably need about 2000 ES to seriously make use of the defensive power of this ascendency.

That means you NEED ES gear. You have very little room for armor/evasion/suppression. (I'll add in here, that if you're using determination on divine blessing support, armor may be decent alternative for gear choices, due to the "% more armour" mods on flasks and determination.)

As I stated earlier, the offensive power of this ascendancy is so strong, that virtually all of your auras can be used for defense. Discipline is a must have for inquisitor. There are some decent corrupted rings/amulets/belts that provide aura effectiveness. I personally think that Purity of the elements is a fantastic aura right now. It gives complete ailment immunity, and the resistances make it easier to get good gear.

With the mana reservation node (sovereignty) and the ES mastery node, which reduces the reservation cost of Discipline, you've got quite a lot of room with mana to reserve more auras. I would suggest Vitality. It also has a reservation efficiency node in the life masteries. You can max this out for huge flat life regen.

Now, you're regenerating flat life through vitality (plus flat life on items are much better now, and more common), AND % life through consecrated ground. Body armors now come with the mod "% increased life recovery". The mod scales your % life regeneration. It scales your flat life regen. AND it scales your life leech. WOW, that's a lot of life recovery, for basically 1 mod. The passive tree nodes "infused flesh" and "Vampyrism" also gain life. You're looking at truly massive amounts of life regenerated, and all of it applies to ES.

The Glorious vanity timeless jewel gives corrupted soul. Most see this keystone as a negative, because it means the ES doesn't protect our life pool as well. But for the inquisitor, this keystone allows us full 100% uptime of our life regeneration. It also gives a decent chunk of flat ES.

I've also slapped a phantasmal purifying flame on my CWDT setup. This gives 20% increased effect of the consecrated ground I'm standing on. This makes me immune to curses, btw. This can be scaled further.... just look up methods to increase the quality on gems. You don't care about the gem level at all.

Defiance banner is a great value for 10% of mana reserved. Just read it's wiki and you'll get the picture.

That's 4 auras, giving life regen, ele resistances, ele ailment immunity, less damage taken, less critical strike chance, and huge flat ES. With the proper reservation nodes, you should have enough many left over for divine blessing and determination.

People remember the big hits, where their life pool suddenly drops way low... but they don't remember all the smaller hits which they didn't recover from adequately. With these measures taken, you're high HP pool, plus regen is strong. However, it's fair to say that getting hit virtually every single time is still a drawback of the build.

Getting hit once for 800 damage can be scary. But getting hit 10 times in quick succession for 80 damage is.... still 800 damage. Is there any way to patch over the massive amount of small hits which really wear down characters, and leave them vulnerable to big hits which 1 shot them?

There's a mod called "-## physical damage taken from attack hits". You'll find in on my character in two places primarily:

First, the immortal flesh belt. This is a great unique belt, and almost every mod on us helps, except the -15 all ele resistances. This is one of the reasons why we're using purity of the elements, so we aren't worried about losing some resistances here. Buy 15 of these belts for 2c each. Corrupt all 15 of them. See if you get a good corruption on one of them. You might get a decent roll, like I did.

The second is my amulent annointment "persistence". Together with the belt, we're looking at literally -150 phys damage from attacks. You're no longer getting nickled and dimed by 5 packs of magic monsters. This defensive layer works BEST when you can't avoid being hit... a bunch. Evasion characters don't get hardly any milage out of this mod.

Wrap up: Surprise gift from the bottom for those who read the whole thing:

By now, you're probably wondering how I managed to get literally 6 ascendancies, with only 4 labs. The forbidden flame/flesh jewel combo gives me Pious Path without having to path through Sanctuary to get it. I waited until now to tell you because the jewels were VERY cheap when I bought them (1 ex each). I can promise you that I haven't bought them up to hoard them lol. But the power in those two jewels are incredible. I'm betting pious path gets nerfed next league because of it.

Basically, one of your rings has to be Gifts from Above.... or you can just use a Sulfur flask. Bottled faith would be best in slot, actually. It's a decent ring otherwise, with rarity, damage, and crit chance. You could corrupt them if you don't like the base implicit.