[Brittleknee] KB/Corrupting Fever Trickster - Solid, Clear-focused Leaguestarter | 3.20

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap - a budget Corrupting Fever Trickster 3.20 UPDATES: -despair no longer works for non-chaos damage so 2nd curse should be changed. Punishment is strong but requires self casting, Poacher's mark is also useful and can potentially be applied via mark on hit support. With rare monster changes it is unclear whether there will be enough value in the rarity + cull setup for storm brand and poachers mark + mark on hit could slot into that 4L to get double use from lifetap Assuming fractured items are still common - convening wands with fractured dot multi were extremely cheap on trade in 3.19. Spam fear essences on them until +1 phys gems and open suffix and craft phys dot multi for an endgame worthy wand Intro Corrupting Fever, the dot you can apply with any other skill, is lacking in tags and hard to scale Trickster's new Polymath node provides a huge generic more multi *and* a crazy amount of mapping sustain. That's it, that's the build. Skills Corrupting fever - your main damage source for clear. Costs a BIG chunk of life to turn on, but this can be countered extremely effectively with an instant recovery on low life flask + ryslatha pantheon. All your other skills are linked to lifetap so the buff will refresh itself as long as you are doing anything more than walking around (steelskin alone is not sufficient cost) 6L fever is simply not plausible on a budget right side of the tree setup, hence the dual 5L setup. KB - Purely a fever delivery mechanism. Awakened chain seems to be only around 1 divine this league, seems worth picking up for additional clear. with access to white sockets, chain can be swapped for maim if any bossing is required Storm Brand - used to apply additional fever stacks on tougher enemies and provide some level of shock and rarity culling. Reap - Additional single target DPS. Dot damage lasts 1.65s so is fairly easy to maintain and nearly doubles your single target damage Gear Body Armour - Skin of the Lords with RT provides incredible value since it removes any requirement to invest in accuracy (previously accounting for 4 points and multiple gear suffixes) as well as huge gem level scaling Cheaper alternative - any 6L with good life and ES! With skin of the lords awkward 'corrupt gem' requirements I used a very basic corrupt 6L for a long time Early game - Restless Ward is a very solid basic option. Sadly difficult to colour and surprisingly expensive in 6L form, but extremely strong 4L'd for early progression and what I used until red maps Pre and post skin of the lords swap gear and trees provided. Amulet Covering this second as our anoint, Spiritual Aid, is key to damage scaling and the rest of the gear choices. I picked up a cheap talisman with this anoint and used it until I could find something with dot multi, life and res to anoint myself. Nothing else in particular required. +1 phys gems, dot multi, room for the additional pierce or AoE crafts are all nice to have. Weapon *DO NOT TRY TO USE A CONVOKING WAND* I got extremely lucky to find one with reduced requirements on trade and the int is still a problem. If you want to try to craft something, use the lower tier 'convening wand' Decent APS is important for the build to feel smooth, beyond that you want gem levels, % minion damage and/or dot multi. Weapons can't roll global phys modifiers so minion damage scaling is crucial to getting DPS out of this slot Shield The newly reworked bone shields provide another easy source of minion damage scaling. Look for the same gem level and/or minion damage mods as weapons, alongside good life. Gloves Haemophilia are too good to pass up for clear. Most of your damage scaling is global phys/spiritual aid based so the pops are extremely juiced, and things get hit multiple times by KB so the bleed chance is enough for reliable triggers Despair on hit corrupted is much cheaper than vuln. Boots Onslaught on kill is great quality of life for mapping, and you need a little suppression from gear somewhere or other, this seems like a good spot for it. Found the focus mod by chance on trade, trying it out for one button ignite/poison protection Rings Vuln on hit for more quality of life, and I thought a lake ring was a good idea to make up for the lack of life on skin of the lords - I had dex to spare after gaining RT. Belt Some garbage i essenced up along the way somewhere I think? Idk, it has life and res, there's just nothing exciting on belts. Flask stuff would be nice i guess. Hat Fever enchant on eva/ES bases cost absolutely nothing, so i essenced + ex slammed (35 cold res, neat!) this up. Hey look phys mit! You won't be seeing that again. Jewels World's most boring watcher's eye - 2.5 divines. Not exciting but it works. If you want to mess with bosses, get vitality life on hit instead and find the suppression on gear/tree Rare jewels - life, dot multi, minion damage, etc. Still boring, but you get very little dot multi elsewhere so they're extremely strong. Levelling 1-16: caustic arrow (pierce, volley/lmp) + puncture + shrapnel ballista. Very solid act 1 setup, probably wouldn't swap off it til library if i had levelling gear. 16-library: pconc (volley, chance to poison, LMP if 4L). Wait til 16 for herald of agony to cap out poison chance. Run multiple life flasks and keep them up to date. Library onwards - 4L fever (brutality, efficacy, swift affliction. Lifetap as 5L is possible but may cost too much life), 4L spellslinger reap (brutality, controlled destruction) 4L KB (lifetap, LMP/GMP from 38, pierce/chain from 38) I ran the spellsling setup all the way to early red maps when I picked up a 6L and began using self cast reap on bosses. If you don't have a levelled empower, you may need the 'reduced life cost of skills' mastery while using lifetap as the 5th Fever/Reap link instead Ascendencies I took One Step Ahead for normal lab and I would do it again. There are several parts of the campaign where it lets you simply skip annoying mechanics. Polymath doesn't have much juice that early on anyway and I waited for merc lab to take it, grabbing charge duration in between as I had pathed to Conduit on the tree by then.