To start with, pob is done pretty much with my gear, and it includes stuff I used while gearing up. I have some significant upgrades still to do (My belt and helm both need to be improved substantially still), but I haven't seen anyone discuss this kind of build synergy with tinctures, so I figured I'd share what I've been doing.

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Important Note: You can almost assuredly optimize this build. A lot. I am no amazing build creator. But figured I'd share this on the off-chance there is anyone else out there that really likes being a melee shadow, and wants to trash all their flasks.

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So, mandatory PoB here:

https://pobb.in/l-Xcp7cvg-Tw

Who is this build for?

It's for people like me who want to play strike skills, want to engage with virtually all content in the game with a single build, and aren't insane money makers. I sell stuff occasionally, but I just map. I don't do profit crafting, I don't flip items, I don't do highly optimized farming, and I never really intend to because that isn't fun for me. I like to map. I like to do expeditions. I like ultimatum. I like blight. I like to fight bosses. I don't want to change characters between those things.

Some basic background on build concept:

I don't like builds that rely on things I can be deprived of to live. Flasks can be stolen, charges lost, molten shell isn't 100% uptime. I also play primarily melee characters, and I love the shadow. So when I saw the new tincture passive that gave a boost for every empty flask slot, I decided to gamble a bit. I took a kinda build I ran previously (I did a reave version of this last league), and adapted for tinctures and to drop gems from my chest (I also gambled on that working with trickster stuff. Yes, I went risky with my league start).

With the new changes to Frenzy, it has a pretty solid damage projection when you're stacked up. You can probably change it to like molten strike and just get some frenzy on hit if you want, and it should work.

Why Tinctures?

Because they are strong. Very strong. And they can make strike skills feel good to use. Remember that insane range people were getting in ancestor league? Well, you can do better than most of them could, and without having to sacrifice 200+ strength for it. And you can get 48% lightning pen at the same time.

Why this build for this tincture interaction?

Because it is the best build I could come up with that doesn't lose much by dropping literally every flask. The only thing this build would really use from flasks would be like some onslaught, or more armor to have even more infinite of ehp, but that doesn't come close to comparing to 36% additional lightning penetration, and 1.8 meters of melee range in my opnion.

How does it play?

Like a melee build that stopped caring about aiming or being near enemies. You move, you tap right click somewhere, let multistrike/additional nearby enemies figure it out, and move on because the screen is now dead.

If things are juiced up with wisps, you do normal melee stuff for the rares - ancestor totems, curse, etc.

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Nice things about the build:

• You can build towards it almost immediately.
• As soon as you equip the Ephemeral Edge, the build comes online.
• Thanks to tinctures, we melee half the screen at a time. I can literally swing and hit mobs at the top of my screen where I only see their feet.
• You have a very easy gearing progression, and its all pretty cheap, there is no part where you go, "Oh, for my build to come online, I need this 20 div piece".
• We use a lot of 1-2 div uniques.
• We aren't hyper reliant on auras.
• What are flasks?
• What is a 6-link?
• The build can start mapping (and engaging with league mechanic) for <1 div of gear, and has such a good progression available for upgrades that by the time I hit red maps, I was already at like >200k EHP and 3 million dps.
• It works fine as a first character.
• You can use Restless Ward as a really easy starter chest, and it'll help you zoom.
• 2 million EHP vs. pinnacles w/o any defensive skills active with my current, easily attainable, gear.
• We have so much lightning penetration from tincture that it really doesn't matter what their lightning resistance is, nothing feels 'awful' to kill.
• Not totally immortal, but my dumb ass was able to handle triple-empowered (With 7k+ juice) minotaur on a map with ~200% phys as ele with it, so it lives pretty good.

Things that aren't so nice about the build:

• Dots kinda suck until you get leech doesn't go away, which I don't recommend until you can forbidden flame/flesh one of your points (Costs like ~4 div).
• Corrupted blood hurts until you can limit it to 5 stacks.
• Cannot leech maps don't work.
• Steal charges maps are doable, but nightmarishly slow (might just use a different skill).
• Not ailment immune (though we don't care about the worst ones because trickster).
  • Can possibly fix this with belt/stormshroud/other shenanigans, but that is effort.
• Ignite is a little scary because we can't flask it away.
• Not very SSF viable, but could probably run it very similarly - some items are just going to be rough.

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Gearing notes (Also in the PoB):

• Tincture: Lightning Pen and Melee Strike range. They're not terribly expensive, and my perfect rolled on cost me 1 div. I like to prioritize the range over the pen, because I like hitting monsters from the other side of rivers. Might be able strike range out for splash, or rage on hit, and get more damage, but then you'd probably be running different tinctures for different content, and I just want to be lazy.
• Helm: Anything ES here. Crown of Thorns is a nice starter. Get resistance, get something better than what I have.
• Weapon: Start with an Ephemeral Edge, eventually upgrade to a Resolute Technique corrupted Ephemeral Edge.
• Shield: Start with anything with a bit of Evasion/ES/Resists. Can even do a second ephemeral edge while leveling if you want. Eventually want to get to an Aegis Aurora. Probably some type of corruption can be done here. I could see long term swapping to a yellow shield with a frenzy implicit, but not sure what that'd look like.
• Amulet: Start with stats/resists/es. Make your way to either a Voices of the Storm or an Ashes w/ 30% quality. They perform pretty similarly. Voices probably your better choice though. Ashes just brings a bit of extra range to your totems, and duration to your guard skills.
• Body Armour: Start with a Ghost Writhe when you get your Ephemeral Edge. Eventually move yourself to something with a good eva/es hybrid when you're 50+, Restless Ward when you can (The movement speed and charge duration are really nice - get a corrupted one for increased damage if possible, they're cheap), and then upgrade for more eva/es as you can.
• Rings: Shavronne's Revelation for your left slot. Maybe one day you'll replace it with a precursors or a ring with a frenzy synth implicit, but that'll cost a bit. I'm using a Taming for the right ring slot, largely because my old tincture gave all damage ignites, but get anything that helps with resists.
• Gloves: Start with anything eva/es, budget option is elder gloves with supported by faster attacks, thunderfist is your next up, and then thunderfist with a +1 frenzy corruption is what you really want (Cost me 4 div for mine iirc).
• Belt: Start with a Bated Breath, get an energy shield synth belt in time, then probably craft that sucker up to be better than my trash.
• Boots: Start with whatever gets you some ES and move speed. Get Darkray Vectors. Get ones with +1 endurance eventually.
• Jewels:
  • A lethal pride to get intimidate and fix your strength. We have two good spots for it, and we can change where we pick up mana mastery reservation efficiency depending on what you can find for this.
  • Forbidden Flame/Flesh: Literally any ascendancy point we use besides Escape Artist. Normally I would do Soul Drinker, but I assume some streamer used that in a build because they are like 20 times what they normally cost currently.
  • That Which Was Taken: Get some stun protection here. After that, can do warcry rage, ele resists, str/int, eva per frenzy, eva per es on helm, whatever you want.
    • Can probably replace with a Watcher's Eye with onslaught w/ haste, es on hit discipline, or wrath stuff, but need to drop haste for wrath then (I prefer haste for the movement speed before we get charges)

Side Notes:

• When you're early on, you can drop some gems to try and free up your helmet slot to fix your resistances. I recommend dropping the counter attack links until you're good on resistances.
• I recommend prioritizing your moderate (I.E. 1-5 div purchases) as such:
  • Thunderfist -> Aegis -> Voices -> Tincture -> +1 Frenzy Thunderfists -> Body Armour -> Forbidden Jewels -> A good That Which Was Taken
• Quality your frenzy as an early priority.
• Until you have melee splash/decent number of frenzy charges, use reave. Can swap to frenzy after you have 7 frenzy charges.
• I got One Step Ahead/Polymath as my last two ascendancies.
• Soul Drinker waits until you have the forbiddens.
• You should probably swap out energy leech for awakened ele damage, when you have the currency for it, for a bit of extra reliability (We have such good recovery though that we spend most time capped out anyways)

Tree Notes:

• Until you get your amulet anointed, you'll want to path into that melee splash cluster pretty early on
• I recommend getting the life on hit nodes just south of trickster start early on, until you are CI
• Swap to CI when you get off of Ghost Writhe

Map Mods:

• Don't do Cannot Leech
• You don't want to do monster steal charges
• Don't do ele reflect until you have protection from it
• Use conventional wisdom beyond this point (If a map has triple damage mods with -max res, you might have a bad time if you also juice it with wisps)

League Mechanics:

• It's... okay at legion and breach.
• Go hogwild on virtually anything else.
• Ultimatum
  • Don't get the stuff where they overwhelm phys reduction
  • Don't do the corrupted blood blades unless you're confident you can avoid them
• Expedition:
  • Don't lightning immune (For obvious reasons)
  • Don't do overwhelm all phys reduction