Lightning SRS Champion

While looking around for some type of interesting character to build, I came across the idea of a Lightning damage SRS champion. I know I'm not the first to try to scale SRS this way, but I thought it would be nice to share some of the thought processes behind how I decided to build this, and to showcase what it is capable of at a relatively high level of investment.

Mapping pob: https://pobb.in/ky6xk4IyLbCm

Bossing pob: https://pobb.in/El9MjyKMU3iX (3 gem swaps and 1 mastery change)

Gameplay videos are at the end of the post.

Core concepts:

• Scaling aura effect and gem levels for Wrath and Smite, using as many tattoos as possible.
• Using the new Volatility support gem to push the high-end rolls of lightning damage very far up, with little to no downside since the low-end rolls can't get much worse anyway.
• Perquil's Toe to then make the incredibly high damage range highroll more consistently.
• Minion crit scaling with the new sceptre, Maata's Teaching. This makes the base crit of your minions equal to the base crit of the weapon.

By their powers combined, these four scaling vectors allow for a surprisingly high amount of damage. At the same time, being a champion with permanent Fortify, armour/evasion, and Fourth Vow/Divine Flesh makes for a very tanky character that rarely dies. All together, it turned out to be a strong all-round build that can map quite quickly, has no problem with uber bosses or juiced content, and is fun to play.

Strengths:

• 20m guaranteed mapping dps, 55m mapping dps if you cast your curses.
• 150m full single target dps for ubers.
• 90k armour, 40k evasion.
• Fourth Vow + Divine Flesh to make the armour more widely effective.
• 100% Spell Suppression.
• 180% permanent movement speed.
• SRS playstyle.

Weaknesses:

• Very expensive (my current investment is more than 600 div).
• Low sustain, you're relying on passive life regen and a life flask.
• Button heavy, you need to be constantly casting SRS, Smite + Wrath, and curses.
• Damage can be inconsistent. If you're not in range with your perquil's toe aura, you lose 30% damage. If you're not in range of your smite aura, you lose 50% damage. Same holds for not keeping SRS up, or forgetting curses. It's a lot of things to maintain and there will be times where it's impossible to do because you are busy dodging bosses' attacks.

Conclusions: I would honestly not recommend this build for general purposes, mainly due to its cost. You can probably scale poison SRS to very similar levels for a much lower price. There are a lot of other builds that achieve the same level of clear / damage at a lower cost as well. That said, I had a lot of fun putting this together. Hunting for double corrupts is an interesting alternative to the standard eldritch crafting of rare gear that most builds do, and it is hilarious to realize you're running a Level 37 Wrath, with 208% increased aura effect. Whenever I stood next to a friend of mine playing an elemental attack build, their damage would literally triple.

There's also a lot of small moving components in this build, like Assassin's Mark generating power charges on hit, meaning attack speed scaling is very valuable, or balancing attributes for maximum tattoo usage, or using Elemental Equilibrium with Avatar of Fire so that your Smite attack gives Lightning Exposure. All things that are fun to think about, and crafting the shield and the gloves were very cool projects on their own. I'll be happy playing this as a last build of the league, and to wrap up my challenges. Best of luck out there exiles.

Videos: Some might still be processing at the time of posting.

Uber Eater: https://youtu.be/uikZuE9D7K0

Uber Exarch: https://youtu.be/gt1ubVsP7e4

Map showcase (with looting): https://youtu.be/1CzKxfO4mOc

Map showcase (without looting): https://youtu.be/WwJYM3ruPA4

Map showcase (no juice): https://youtu.be/5UxXNNWRrYg

Map showcase (80% deli): https://youtu.be/rtZJwdIIITI

Map showcase (100% deli): https://youtu.be/eMF5D1RU4xY