My zero to hero off-meta league starter: self-cast Storm Burst of Repulsion Elementalist

Uber Sirus demo: https://youtu.be/0wvfLMrZl0I

Originator Breach map demo: https://youtu.be/n-24YOh-yVg

PoB: https://pobb.in/oaNP1UtNu3Fc

Self-cast Storm Burst of Repulsion Elementalist is about as off-meta as you can get. The vast majority of the 0.3% of players that are using SBoR are Heirophants using totems. There are literally 11 SBoR Elementalists on Poe.ninja

I don't do as much damage as the highest DPS Elementalist builds on ninja, but my build has the highest EHP, and does good enough DPS so I'm happy with it. I've also built crit and elemental ailment immunity into it, so the survivability is decent even in pretty juiced content, though my max hits are not super impressive so every once in a while you do just pop. Omens of Amelioration carried me to 100, though I didn't down tune my content for leveling.

I had a really good time with this build, hitting personal milestones of farming Nightmare maps for uber fragments, killing my own ubers, first ever Mageblood, hitting level 100 and 38/40 without any carries (also the last two challenges are going to be easy, just trying to spawn a starfall crater because I didn't know you had to complete the Kingsmarch mini quests before it would lol).

Some notes: I only play builds I develop myself, and I don't watch streamers or try to run creators' builds, so I probably have a lot of holes in my knowledge of the game. I'm also terrible at crafting, so I have no crafting guides, I just bought all my equipment.

I think the league's economy being incredibly generous was a big part of this build's success, but at the same time my gear isn't super incredible. I'm sure this build could be improved upon.

Gear notes: Storm Burst scales hugely with quality because it improves your base duration, so it acts as the base for your other duration scaling. A volatile corrupted Ashes is AFAIK the best possible amulet for this build, but it's worth messing around with PoB to see exactly how much quality you need to hit the breakpoints. I also use a Timeclasp instead of Lost Unity because the DPS increase of Lost Unity isn't huge and would require giving up either Flesh and Stone or Herald of Ice, though Herald of the Hive would possibly make the clear a bit better. Cold conversion gloves allow the use of Trinity, and with Invert the Rules you don't need to scale any exposure or -res curses, and it completely nullifies any +res monster bonuses, but pen still works.

A note on actually using the skill: it is significantly more active than Storm Burst, as you can't just hold the button to achieve max single target DPS. For clear you can hold the button down and the orbs will bounce away and have good coverage, but for single target, you have to channel until the orbs start bouncing away, then release to catch the monster in the release explosions. This does give you significant ability to reposition without messing up your DPS, unlike regular SB that has significant ramp time, and requires using Frost Blink to reposition without ruining your ramp. My mouse hand and forearm had to condition to get used to the constant hold/release pattern of the skill.

In addition to actually having to time your main skill, I couldn't find any way to automate my curse, so it's a minimum three button build, one for skill, one for curse, one for flame dash. I like an active play style but I know it's a turnoff for a lot of people.

Neither the clear speed nor the boss damage are as impressive as some of the stuff I've seen on this subreddit, but I do think Storm Burst of Repulsion is a very competent skill. I would guess it's a solid B tier league starter.