Scuffed Phantasm Auto Bomber

I've once again re-lapsed like a Spiderman villain. Putting on his yellow spandex to rob a bank with his latest invention, one part to pass the time, another as quite cry for help.

Anyway, here's the PoB, explanation below.

https://pobb.in/0_Qjoh_TsDpn

The TL:DR is that we have 5.83m dps (ignore full DPS), and more than 36.7k life regen, but are vulnerable to true one-shots.

Warning: do not play this. It isn't worth the investment, and it's untested. It works in theory, but don't do it unless you already have everything you need and want to have some fun.

###What am I even looking at?

The core concept is simple: Spawn 20 phantasms, have them all explode via Minion Instability, then do it again.

The idea is simple, but the execution to automate this absolute mistake of ~20 hours of my life, not including this write-up,uses/requires almost a full set of unique items and 10 unique jewels. Buckle up and get ready for jank.

###Soulwrest.

To start, we're using the unique staff Soulwrest to summon phantasms every time we "consume" a corpse. That is in quotes, because it actually doesn't distinguish between consuming a corpse versus exploding. That little quirk saves us a lot of mana, which I will get to.

It is the core of the build. I would say it is required, but that's like saying the propellers are important to a helicopter. Anyways, the goal is to summon and destroy as many corpses as possible, all automatically.

Normally, the max limit of phantasms is 10. For whatever reason, this limit goes up to 20 when the staff is socketed with Summon Phantasm. We could raise this to 21 with a level 21 summon phantasm, but it makes the math a little harder, and would only be close to a 5% increase in damage, so I didn't include it.

That's all we really care about from Soulwrest. The mana regen will come in clutch later, but everything else is superfluous.

###Creating the minions

So, we have a need to create 20 corpses, and destroy 20 corpses, automatically.

Automating them, at least to the extent of triggering them, is simple. The moment our minions die, Heart Bound loop will inflict some damage to us. 7k physical damage, but we'll get to that. Suffice it to say for now, that even with 90% physical damage reduction, that amount of damage will trigger at least a level 1 CWDT.

Volatile dead with Awakened spell cascade and the helmet enchant to increase the amount of orbs by 1 results in exactly 20 destroyed corpses. That is, if there are 20 corpses to explode.

How do we create the corpses? Desecrate is in a different CWDT setup. It will be triggered first. There is a very small delay between each of the created Desecrates, and an even smaller delay between Desecrate's cast and Volatile Dead. In theory, before the next pile of corpses is created, the previous one will be destroyed by Volatile Dead. If not, then things need to be re-organized to utilize a CWC/brand Unearth.

So, a total of 20 corpses are created and destroyed whenever our CWDT triggers. For extra automation, we can fit 1 curse into our desecrate CWDT. We chose elemental weakness, because our corrupted Heartbound loop can have flammability.

Corpsewalker is a QOL feature that ensures we're always near some corpses, and adds some extra breathing room to bad RNG in how the orbs spawns are targeted. Later on, it finds use in helping us solve the mana problem.

###Killing the minions.

Our damage comes from Minion Instability, which makes our minions go kaboom. Though, it should be noted that they do not explode on death, just when they reach low life.

Yes, even dying gets complicated in PoE when you want to. Low-life is counted as 50% or less maximum life. A minion does not necessarily reach low-life when they die, such as when they expire or are replaced. But both scenarios count as them dying.

The phantasms must die as fast as possible by reaching low life. There are some ways to instantly kill minions we spawn by summoning them with 1 hp, but we're creating too many of them for that to be viable, and it would also break the CWDT loop.

So, they need to take damage. The only option for Phantasms is Infernal Legion. With a 23% Anomalous Infernal Legion, they will take 51.5% of their maximum life as fire damage every second.

But minions have a base 40% elemental resistance, and Soulwrest grants 5% life per second if we have consumed a corpse recently (which of course we have.) This is positively too slow, but there are no alternatives.

The solution is the Fortress Covenant, turning notables into "minions take 20% increased damage." We get 8 of those so that our minions are taking 160% increased damage. To help us achieve this, we also use an Uber Thread of Hope to snag some inconvenient passives. This saves us no points, but is better for our resistances and life due to how we path to it. The minions now have a x1.56 multiplier to fire damage taken per second.

###How fast do we CWDT, and how much damage?

Alright, so long story short: ~1.484 times per second. That number is based exclusively on how long it takes for our minions to die. In reality, the staggered cascades will add a slight delay as the minions will not die all at once.

With the current set-up vs Guardian/Pinnacle, each phantasm pops for ~196.5k damage.

20 minions dying 1.483 times per second for that amount of damage is approximately 5.83 million dps.

Against non-boss enemies, we are not able to automate Flammability, and our war-cry is unreliable.

For that reason, our DPS is only 5.67 million.

There is one flaw to our CWDT set-up: if they trigger before the minions die, the timer is reset, and we take Heartbound loop damage instantly from spawning all those minions. This can be quite painful.

###Not getting clapped by the Heartbound Loop.

If you have ever played a CWDT loop, you know there's a risk: Killing yourself.

When our minions die, all 20 of them, we take 350 damage per minion. That's 7000 physical damage coming our way. This happens approximately 1.483 times per second for approximately 10387 physical damage per second.

But we're in luck, because it's not a dot, and it's not just one hit. Each 350 damage instance is considered a hit.

To start, we need amour, but for reasons I will get to, we cannot use determination, and all our equipment (except for the gloves) grants evasion/es. But we can turn that evasion into amour with Iron Reflexes...

At the exact opposite side of the tree.

Not convenient, but we need it. Do you know what is convenient? Precursor's emblem. If we get one of those with Iron Reflexes while at maximum frenzy charges, then all we need to do is ensure we're always at maximum frenzy charges, or we'll just die!

The grand spectrum allows us to get +3 to minimum frenzy charges. That's another 3 unique jewels, and they're expensive. 3 Pacifism would be a viable, low-cost alternative, but does not come with the bonus of 30% max life.

At this point, the build is a dream, so let's also say we get one with endurance charge generation and armor per endurance charge.

For extra survivability, we also use an Impossible Escape to Imbalanced guard, grabbing Prismatic Skin, Soul of steel, and some extra armor/resists.

All of this is to just avoid getting one shot. The long story short is that we're only resting at 4.4k armor and some additional physical damage reduction. We do manage to get up to the cap of 90% reduction from each hit, because 350 physical damage isn't that much on its own.

Now we're only taking 1038 damage per second from our CWDT loop.

I will note here, that they also have a 69% chance to summon whenever they get a kill, and 20% chance whenever they hit. Don't worry about this breaking the CWDT loop, because they simply do not attack/cast fast enough to get even one hit in before they die. But it does mean we will be taking even more damage from our CWDT loop, because their death means some extra spawns happen.

When that happens, they are replaced by the CWDT loop instantly, resulting in us taking even more hits. But this is actually a good thing, and we're about to see why.

###The best aura in the game: Vitality

Edit: Turns out it doesn't stack, but we still need to sustain our CWDT loop, as it pushes our life regen to 2.7k.

Well, we took the high road and didn't use Determination. Time to reap the rewards

Sublime Vision makes it so vitality causes us to regenerate 15% of our maximum life, every time we are hit. As previously established, our ass is hooked up to a spankbot powered by the hoover dam.

This scales with Increases and reduction to our life recovery rate, and our life regeneration rate. Even though our minions are dying, they'll be replaced before we even feel it, like a 5 year old’s pet goldfish. Bone Barrier grants up to 20% increased recovery rate of life. Replica Atziri's foible and our gloves grant a total of 51% increased regeneration rate. It also helps immensely with our attribute requirements.

So, 15 * 1.51 * 1.2 * 29.66 = 806.1588% life regenerated per second.

This translates into an additional 36760 life regen per second.

That's a little bit on the large size, and it better be, because we have almost no other defense. If it doesn't one-tap us, we live.

Remember how each minion has a 20% chance to summon a phantasm whenever they hit a rare or unique enemy? That means on average, we're actually going to be hit 20% more times on average versus bosses, for a total of 44113 life regen.

And when we're mapping, with 20% quality, summon phantasms are going to have a 79% chance to summon on hit, resulting in even more regeneration.

###Triggered mana costs go brrrr

Our minions cost nothing, but our 2 CWDT loops are not so generous.

Desecrate costs 35 mana, elemental weakness costs 62. Volatile dead costs 37. With 1.48 triggers per second, that's ~198 mana per second. We want to be able to cast the occasional Flammability, Frostblink, and infernal cry.

Essence of gluttony is our solution. Each corpse grants 5 mana regen, our CWDT loops leaves 5 corpses behind, and Corpsewalker covers the difference to get up to +50 base mana regen. Naturally, we have consumed a corpse in the past 2 seconds, resulting in a lovely 313 mana regen. Enough to play around with our other skills, and support our CWDT loop.

###Soul eater

Yes, this deserves its own section.

Our minion's death donate souls faster than Mathil fans donate to his shirtless league streams. By the time you notice it, it will have already reached 100 stacks of soul eater and have become an unkillable god.

And this is where you know it's a meme build.

Unironically, weapon swap to conversion trap and enjoy your new minion. For maximum meme potential, use Divergent conversion trap and watch it power up like Goku. Just never make the mistake of running Burial Chamber.

###Conclusion.

This build, while technically viable, is not worth it to actually play in the league. Between the thread of hope, the grand spectrums, 2 awakened spell cascades, the 3 passive voices, sublime vision, uber thread of hope, impossible escape, replica shroud of the lightless, and a very good precursor's emblem, it's just not worth it.

Other builds will have more clear speed, damage, and durability on a lower budget. But let’s be honest here, that’s probably for the best.