Ward CWDT Bullet Hell Occultist - mini guide / showcase

High budget PoB - 20-30 exalt investment. https://pastebin.com/TYhT3uVM

Final end game PoB - https://pastebin.com/EAntuVzE - only upgrades are saving some skill points by getting more resists on gear

Early leveling tree if want to use CWDT starting in blood aqueducts - https://pastebin.com/Gdsed36Z

​

Other videos:

Pew pew in hideout and still 120 FPS? 27%CDR for 5 triggers per second per CWDT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-p9zOaJIrc

A8 Sirus final phase - can tank 2-3 hits of die beam and still be fine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAvHQA-u9C8

Feared 75% quant - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26rMLWRdr5Y

Forge of the phoenix with mid range budget gear - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_5BZk-J2zk

Shaper - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3BOZwLUiJo

Forgotten 77% quant - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b4OsyBvQnE

​

​

Update: For endgame bosses, I've done Shaper, A8 Sirus, 75% quant (thanks grimro for tip to get 5 crescent splinter) Forgotten, 75% feared, 75%+ Formed, 75%+ Hidden, and 75%+ Twisted. Tried simulacrum for first time since delirium league and got to wave 24 / died to one shot boss teleport attack over and over :\. I don't know the fight and this build is not for simulacrum farming.

Pros:

• DPS tops around 6 mil sirus DPS with 20-30 ex investment.
• 0 buttons walking simulator other than Vaal RF which is overkill in most cases
• Shoots projectiles in all directions, from GMP anomalous Frostbolt (20% chance to return), Ice spear, Sniper's Mark, and Eye of winter.
• Profane bloom pops
• 20% sap, 15% brittle, 30% scorch
• Permanent 124% movement speed - not the highest, but this has almost 100% up time. This build is also stun / freeze / chill immune.

Cons:

• Can be hard to see dangerous ground effects like that from sirus, need to pay close attention.
• High damage On-Death effects that make it past profane bloom can break through ward defensive layer. The survivability on this build comes from debuffing enemies, and enemies that are dead do not have any debuffs. With that said though, we still do have 78% fire / 78% lightning.
• Have to restart loop after scourge is over or when changing areas. If it was earlier in the league, I could have crafted a +1 spells essence of insanity weapon swap a lot cheaper and this would be less annoying.

Core Idea

The core idea of this CWDT variant is working around the flaws of heartbound loop CWDT builds, mainly using Leadership's Price / Occultist. I am not going to go into detail on how heartbound loop works and don't recommend this build to anyone that doesnt like to do basic math. There are many other guides on heartbound loop CWDT, as the concept has been around for a long time, but I do go over the key requirements for budget (non divergent CWDT, 2100 dmg taken per loop, and non-budget: 2800 damage taken per loop, with divergent CWDT and lvl 21 skeletons).

• No survivability because of 0% physical damage reduction? Sap (20% less damage of enemies), frigid wake (10% reduced damage of enemies with skitterbot chill) , enfeeble on hit(~10-20% less damage of enemies), malediction (10%) reduced damage of enemies. Since we can't reduce the physical damage ourselves take, we reduce the damage that enemies deal.
• No crit and ele overload sucks now? Brittle 15% base crit = 100% crit for all your spells with just a few crit nodes + free power charges
• No single target damage? Scorch + Brittle -30% to all resistances, +3 max fire resist for even more sustain while using righteous fire. 100% crit from brittle..

Ascendancy choice

We go occultist for the extra clear speed from profane bloom, extra curse (auto cast sniper's mark is OP for both clear speed and boss damage), survivability (malediction / frigid wake chill reduced damage), cold damage, and freeze / chill immunity. With 3k life, 1k ward, and around 600-1000 mana mind over matter, along with greater than 55% damage reduction against enemies we debuff, we only die vs very big physical hits, essentially physical hits greater than 10k. This build also has 124% movement speed and phasing 99% of the time, so you can just run in circles or wherever you want and not take any damage unless you run into some big windup.

Leadership's Price stat balancing

Balancing Dexterity and Inteligence is very easy on a witch using Careful Planning and Brutal Restraint +4 dex nodes. You can buy the dex roll at whatever stat you need it for 1-2 chaos. You take any minor nodes around the brutal restraint to get as much dex you need to balance it.

Scorch, Brittle and Sap Ailment effectiveness

Getting max effect brittle, sap and scorch is very easy. Since we have all ailment conflux (don't need initial crit like secret's of suffering does), Brittle and scorch basically double dip their effectiveness with each other. Scorch applies minus to all elemental resist, which gives you more brittle when you hit them again, then you crit and get a bigger scorch and bigger brittle, and then a bigger crit, etc... until you reach max effectiveness even vs A8 sirus. As you can see from the videos, this build hits very fast, at least a dozen times per second, so things are very quickly debuffed. I also have an autocast arc to pre-curse and debuff anything before my projectiles hit them as an extra dmg / survivability boost. I probably had around a third of the damage as shown in the video and I only needed 90% effectiveness and 5-link GMP frostbolts could still apply max ailment effectiveness against A8 Sirus. Vs even tankier bosses than A8 sirus, we have a 5% chance for double damage to apply a bigger effect, which will proc often due to our cast / hit rate.

120% non-damaging ailment effectiveness comes from using frost, ash, and storm, 1 critical mastery and 1 elemental mastery.

Ward Gear

For this build to be comfortable, you ideally want 1000+ ward or you will suicide from 700 physical damage * however much increased damage taken you have (shock / vulnerability / shrieking scorge debuff)

Aim for 600+ ward on helmet, and 230+ ward on boots. Combined with 30% global defense staff mastery, skin of the loyal, and survival secrets 20% reduced flask effectiveness, you will have 1000+ ward. You can either craft your own gear using dense fossils with an ilvl 84 runic crown and runic sabbaton or just buy it. On craftofexile, you can see it only takes 22 dense fossils (1 chaos each) on average to hit 3 T3 or higher ward rolls which will easily give you 600 + ward on a 30% qualitied / high percentile helmet, then just hope you get some open suffixes or resists, or keep rolling.

26% or higher quality olroth's with 56 charges used (you don't need the lowest roll, just make sure it says 56 charges used). If you don't have extra quality on your olroth's, you can spec into the extra flask duration nodes on your cluster jewels, and then remove them later. Basically you want your olroth's flask to last at least 10 seconds as Balbala procs every 5 seconds.

Sustaining Olroth's with Balbala Timeless Jewel

I have made a spreadsheet / calculator that will tell you how many charges you will have gained after x seconds, given how much increased charges gained / empty flasks you have. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WB-M7KnoDxtIJOijWG-RZFXaSAT7LiH2GWy1uFCL_4g/edit?usp=sharing

you need your olroth's to last at least 10 seconds, and you need to get the minimum amount of charges to use it after those 10 seconds. In my tree and with my gear, I have 85% flask charges gained and 64% increased flask effect duration with a 26% olroth's. I suggest activating your olroth's flask in hideout, and coming back 10-20 minutes later, and check that it is still looping, as a test.

Weapon swapping to start loop

I use summon skeletons lvl 21 (after + gems) + spell echo + unleash, but if you run out of mana after swapping back, consider using a second skeleton + anomalous minion speed + less duration, to trigger the loop reliabily for a few seconds, then, swap over. Your weapon swap must maintain the summon skeletons in your 4 link at lvl 21 if you are doing the lvl 21 loop, or it will not trigger when you swap back.

Trigger Order

The only one that matters is that your skeleton 4 link be in your helmet. You want it to trigger before your other spells incase you are low on mana.