How it works

The core of the build is Blade blast of unloading. This is a transfigured gem that detonates your blade vortex stacks instead of lingering blades. It has three crucial components:

All your blade vortex stacks are detonated in sequence from a single cast. This means that if you have 10 stacks this will hit 10 times. Think giga unleash.
Once you begin the detonation chain you can still move while it goes off
"100% more Area of Effect per Blade Vortex blade detonated". As the stacks detonate they get larger and larger. Without excessive AoE investment you can get to 7m+ radius on the final detonation.

Well this is great you say, but how do I get 10 stacks consistently without having to stop and pack your vortex shells? The answer is arcanist brand. By default you can have 5 brands active at a time so if you pair it with blade vortex you should be generating 1 charge per brand per cast. BUT WAIT you say! Arcanist brand will detach as enemies die and when there are fewer enemies you will have less activations? This brings in the most important part of this build - brand recall. Brand recall keeps your brands closeby and can be automated. Crucially, every time it activates it also triggers all your brands, instantly giving you 5 stacks of blade vortex. With a little investment in the tree and some cooldown recovery from sabo our brand recall has a 1.5s cooldown.

All that's left is to make the build feel "smooth". I hated casting arcanist brand frequently so I went with Ascendant to grab all the skill effect duration I could. Paired with more duration support each Arcanist brand will last between 10-17 seconds (depending on attachment duration) giving us plenty of time to run around and self-detonate before having to reload. Duration scaling also prevents our blade vortex stacks from expiring between packs.

Pros

HUGE AoE - The scion and witch trees give us access to generic area of effect. This not only gives us screen wide blade blasts but also dramatically improves usability of our other abilities, most notably herald of ice and flesh and stone.
COLD CONVERSION - this lets us take advantage of extremely efficient Hatred and is a great defensive layer, freezing and chilling enemies that aren't immediately destroyed
CHEAP - no chase uniques required to get started. I've been playing this in SSF with self crafted rares.
HIGHLY MIN MAXABLE - there are a lot of things that you can improve upon. Your build scales off crit, duration, cooldown, ele damage, physical damage, cast speed AND the skill has a whopping 250% damage effectiveness. I've seen power charge impale versions of the build do 100m+ on a single cast.
ALTERNATE BUILD PATHS - I've seen quite a few different ways to play this. Some people use Sabo + Triggerbots to double the casts of blade vortex. Most people skip cold conversion to go for pure phys but this generally requires a lot more investment and Entropic Devastation
SURPRISINGLY TANKY - our positioning and Scion ascendencies allow us to get close to suppression cap and have a decent amount of block. Large AoE flesh and stone also does 20% flat damage reduction in a wide area. Duration scaling gives us a 3s immortal call with no endurance charges as well as only 2.4s cooldown from cooldown scaling.

Cons

POOR SINGLE TARGET - this is definitely starts out as a mapping build not a bossing build. Your damage is great for huge groups of enemies but waiting for your vortex to recharge in an empty room is a little rough. Also without charges you have virtually no AoE so you have to stand quite close to bosses.
LOTS OF BAD MAP MODS - cooldown reduces your brand recall which makes the build feel horrible. Aura effect reduces the impact of your Flesh and Stone which is an important defensive layer. Avoid ailment is fine but you won't get ASMR herald of ice pops. Crit damage reduction will cripple your clear. Reduced recovery will prevent you from recovering ES which you need to cast spells.

What to use it for

As mentioned above, not a bossing build unless you start investing. Some people use it for ubers especially on Assassin but we're talking $$$$$. I've been using it for breach, altars and strongboxes and that's honestly been a lot of fun.

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