Hi guys, I recently came back to the league after not playing much on launch and I really wanted to have a look at Living Lightning because the skill looked really cool. This was my first minion build so if things aren't optimal or I've missed an obvious trick please tell me so I can fix it.

This build can fairly comfortably do all pinnacles (as long as you're ok with a few portals) and even some nightmare maps, but it definitely doesn't have enough in it to do ubers or super juiced content.

Build showcase: https://youtu.be/Q8sAJ0NU9mI

POB: https://pobb.in/kwpPkCvEjEfQ

Note that this doesn't have damage or the offerings inside it because POB doesn't support Living Lightning or the automatic offerings from Queen's Hunger, so me figuring out my damage and optimizing it was mostly just off vibes or doing the math manually (like making sure my minions were crit capped). If you want and idea of my DPS it takes around 40 seconds to kill Black Barya.

Current build is like 30 div but you can get most of the way there for about 10-15 div. Greater multistrike is very expensive and is only a tiny damage increase and some QoL (as the minons last longer with it vs normal multistrike)

Offense:

• Spawn Living lightning with storm brand (best method that I could find)

  • Other alternatives are tornado and bladefall of trarthus but they need added lightning dmg or a bit of phys to lightning conversion since living lightning will only spawn on lightning damage. Bladefall of trarthus lets you autobomb but I don't think we have enough AOE on the build for it to feel comfortable

• Scale damage via crit, gem links and auras

  • Smite and Wrath give a lot of added damage (which means you don't care about scaling the gem level of living lightning itself as much)

  • Also run precision (so I can actually hit with smite) and haste for more DPS but these two also buff me

• Get living lightning on a multi-link weapon + The Squire to boost it's damage even more + regular weapons don't really give you anything (can consider sign of the sin eater in white maps for the lvl 30 smite aura)

• Melee splash is really good for clear because the chains from Living Lightning also proc splash -- I swap it out for Minion Damage support in single target situations

• Living lightning has high damage variance, so I support it with Volatility and also run Perquil's toe for the lucky damage (and there aren't that many useful Amulet mods for this build anyway).

• Scale minion crit and crit multi because Living Lightning has base 13% crit

• Go triple offering with Leash of Oblation and Queen's Hunger for more damage - we amp this with the Catarina ascendancy to increase their effect even further

• Get intimidate and exposure on gloves, conductivity for res reduction.

Defense:

There aren't a lot of defenses on this build, it's fairly squishy to big hits but block cap means in maps it's not much of a problem. It is worth noting that because I have a lot of duration on my skills, I don't need to spend very much time standing still and casting which goes a long way towards not dying.

• Block cap reached fairly easily via Bone Offering and then topped off via Bastion of Hope (Guardian doesn't have a great 3rd Ascendancy node so this was the best I could do)

• A bit of max ele res from tree

• Forbidden Taste on Savage hit lets me quickly recover when my block fails to do it's thing against a big hit -- I have 75% chaos res against dots from my pantheon

• Pantheon is Soul of Arakaali for more defenses against dot damage

• 80% reduced extra damage from crits on tree

• Determination and Vitality for a bit of phys mit (not much...) and recovery

• Phasing from watcher's eye helps me keep moving even when the screen is covered

What can be improved?

Well, I don't think there is much to do here other than some small things like getting a lvl 21 arrogance for my vitality and fixing the implicits on my boots (Brittle is useless as my minions are crit capped already and there's probably something better than 7% life regen). I'd personally like a bit more life but I'm not sure where to get it other than just spending more currency. I could definitely get a better Queen's hunger, lol. Also, my Assassin's Mark should be lvl 21 instead of having quality as my minions don't need power charges to crit cap.

Supreme Ostentation is definitely worth considering, but I was too lazy to hunt for a good one and then go around buying tattoos for everything so it didn't happen. If there was a way to get one more support gem level on living lightning I'd hit a breakpoint to go from 16 to 18 minions, but there isn't a simple way to do that which is a bit of a bummer. I'm pretty sure Rallying Cry doesn't work for scaling damage because the wiki says Rallying cry doesn't work on non-blocking minions (which Living Lightning is), but this isn't something I've gone out of my way to test.