Goratha's Chaos Fireball Blood Mage league start plans - DEFINITELY NOT A BAIT! POE2 The Third Edict

CHAOS BLOOD MAGE FIREBALL BUILD Main idea: New Blackflame notable converting all fire damage to chaos damage. What this means: No longer scale off fire damage or elemental damage, elemental weakness and exposure no longer work either. What does work? Chaos Damage, Despair, and Wither are the main way to scale now. Wither will be applied through Withering Presence early, probably replaced later for a weapon swap ember fusillade with wither effect and curse effect on the tree. The Wicked Quill and Effigy of Chaos are the best weapon swap items. Wicked Quill grants wither on hit, and Effigy of Chaos will grant some critical weakness. This build has a LOT of end-game uniques that stand out. The most obvious is probably Rathpith, this scales crit and spell damage by gaining life. Snakepit is a nice option in combination with the fork nodes on the tree, for an additional projectile. Seed of Catalysm should add a lot of damage through critical strike chance and critical strike bonus, you can use two of these as well. Defiance of Destiny will add a ton of % life and survivability. Loads of really rare and good uniques for massive end-game scaling. Of course early on good rares with life/res should do, and you will likely need some gear with resists... though Veil of the Night also could fix that issue. Current idea on the tree is to head to ranger while grabbing all chaos damage and critical strike nodes on the way to evasion and movement speed nodes. Deflection should be really strong defensively, but mainly want the movement speed and fork nodes (maybe using Fork support gem?) NEW FIREBALL SCALING?! Fireball: No longer creates secondary Firebolt projectiles by default. Instead, it can Consume a Fire Infusion to do so. Now has a minimum Gem level of 3 (previously 9). Primary projectile and explosion now deal 15-22 damage at Gem level 3 (previously 9-14), scaling up to 242-362 damage at Gem level 20 (previously 135-202). Secondary projectiles now deal 22-33 damage at Gem level 3 (previously 10-15), scaling up to 404-606 damage at Gem level 20 (previously 145-218). Secondary projectiles can now hit the same target as the primary projectile. Fireball gets a massive damage buff and now can shotgun secondary projectiles. This comes at the cost needing to generate infusion. The main way this build generates infusion is through Living Bomb, it will drop a remnant after it kills a mob or explodes. Siphon Elements is a spirit reservation that will drop remnants when you apply ailments, possibly won't need this but will be an option as well. Lastly Cast on Critical with the new "Snap" gem, should automatically drop remnants when you proc it on ignited targets. Frost Wall will likely still be useful when combined with Fork, for overlapping and proccing Fireballs, as well as generating both Life and Fire remnants.