Chaos DoT Occultist League Starter Guide/Breakdown for Ruthless (PoE Ancestor 3.22)

Optional: - use a templar mule to grab Holy Flame Totem (mud flats) and Vitality (brutus) plus an extra quicksilver flask from the Tidal Island quest. This takes about 30-40mins and will save you a lot more time than that for your main character. - IMO it's not worth muling for extra curses, just use gemstones for them. Early acts: - Best to take Freezing Pulse for mud flats reward and grab Blight with a quick witch mule later, unless you get a lucky +1 chaos wand. - Take Clarity from Brutus - Essence Drain before Merveil - Cold Snap from Intruders in Black reward (taking acrimony as your 1st DoT dmg wheel on the tree lets you use cold dot as well for a bit, and it can give frenzy charges) - Bane from Lost in Love (get a new curse every time you get an Uncarved Gemstone) - Don't worry about not having multiple curses immpediately in Bane, Blight is our main single target skill - Soulrend from Sever the Right Hand (nothing else good here, probably not even worth using this, idk) - Summon Chaos Golem or Void Sphere from Breaking the Seal - For the tree, get Acrimony as your first DoT damage wheel and then path to whispers of doom directly so you can get 2nd curse by the time you're doing Act 3 library. - You can respec the travel nodes later once you have the other nodes of the right side of the tree and you've pathed through the travel nodes under Tolerance. Notes: - The 'better' versions of gear and tree revolve around you having the big auras. If you don't have the big auras you don't need to take reservation stuff. - This build does not have armour or evasion and instead aims to rely upon a strong combination of Petrified Blood and double recoup through the reworked Vile Bastion node with a solid ES pool. - With the tree alone we can hit 74% damage taken recouped as life over 3 seconds, with better gear this can go above 100% - Petrified Blood only prevents life loss so we can take big hits, lose our ES and some life and then start recouping that damage taken as both life and ES instantly. Smaller hits will be recouped instantly as ES so we don't have to rely as much on recharge. - Replica Soul Tether is a huge upgrade as Corrupted Soul makes the damage we take become split between life and ES so that recoup applies to both - Keep Flesh and Stone in Sand Stance, it's like Fortify but for stuff that hits us from further away. - Determination and Grace do not give flat defenses any more making them not worth running for this build - You could fit Discipline into the build if you find an enlighten maybe (lol), I wouldn't bother. Vaal Discipline can offer a good extra defensive layer for your ES on its own, though with recoup it may not be that important. - Purity of Elements is really strong in this build as we don't have another reliable source of freeze immunity, but obviously don't expect to find this for a while. - I put The Stampede in the better gear section because I plan to farm a lot of Blight and 150% base movespeed is really good for a build that wants to keep distance with enemy packs while clearing. - Maw of Conquest gives extra recoup and poison immunity which are both really helpful making it a good helmet choice if you get one - Lori's Lantern is a good ring once you have Petrified Blood as it makes enemy damage Unlucky and gives both ele and chaos res on top. - This build should be good for TotA as it throws temp chains + punishment (debilitate reduces movement speed) on everything, you can swap summon skeletons into a spare socket to help defend totems.