Proof of Concept: https://pobb.in/FO7M1xyL8weV
Inspired by a recent Woolfio Video, a short look at the available unique tinctures, a post on the main sub about ways to fully shift elemental damage that I couldn't find again, 0 testing as well as way too long in PoB, I present a way too complicated, zDPS way to achieve near immunity to (non-phys/chaos) hits.
Activate tinctures at the start of the instance, cyclone into some worms until reaching a couple of hundred mana-burn. Once you have enough, any hit that breaks your wards should also fill the Iron flask to restore it again. (Tincture mastery for inc flask charges per mana-burn + flagellant mod)
All elemental damage is shifted to fire, which we reduce by our amount of mana-burn. (Flat decrease multiplied by tincture effect and after most other mitigations such as resistance/endurance charges).
Mana-burn is sustained by converting it to Weeping Wounds to scale off of Life, which can be reduced by 99% by combining double transforming nodes on the passive tree and some qualitied Ming's Hearts with Presence to cut the last <1% down a bit. A more thought out version might leverage the returning Lake of Kalandra misted items, but those I found on the trade site proved insufficient to get the extremely low, but above one amount of life we need. Life regen comes from armor mods, recoup and Agnostic, which would probably still need more mana regen somewhere. Jugg with Untiring could also work.
To qualify as a real build, you'd have to find some way to actually deal damage, didn't try too hard on that front. Also, some way to self damage to abuse ward+recoup interaction to further fuel our stacks of mana burn. (a ring slot could be freed for minion looping, Replica Tulfall would require a lot of additional modifiers, Forbidden Rite scales off of tiny Life/non-existent ES, Hiltless can't be used with a shield)
Just wanted to post this here to get it out of my head, and because a functionally nigh-immortal build with 10 max life and almost 0 conventional defenses was too funny not to share, even in the state of a rough draft. If you're thinking about trying this, don't. Parts of this may be salvageable into real builds, but Petrified Blood + Defiance of Destiny is probably better in most cases anyway.
Main take away for me was that with ward coming down to a 2s restore timer, and the presumed availability of 'well rolled' ward bases with faster start of recharge from shipments, you can have a pseudo guard skill on a decent cooldown for 1~2 gear slots and belt now.
