PoB: https://pastebin.com/j8aAgc2b

The Formed 80% quantity

Wanted to revisit Archmage Cremation from Ultimatum league to see what the state of Archmage is now after its crippling nerfs.

Playing a Scion this time, it leans harder on the right side of the tree for 100% spell suppression. Pathfinder sub-ascendancy and permanent flasks give resistances, elemental mitigation, and a noticeable amount of evasion/armour without auras. Flasks are flexible and can be empowered enough to also give stun immunity or curse immunity (or more zoom, I suppose) with a flask affix.

While it was able to clear 80% Feared deathless and wave 30 Simulacrum because of the limitless sustain, the damage is comparatively lackluster. The average hit is around 50-60% of what I recall having in Ultimatum league with worse gear.

##Defensive summary:

• 100% chance to suppress spell damage
• 30-35% less elemental damage taken, 22% phys taken as cold
• 9800 effective life total from 58% MoM
• 5800 Arcane Cloak
• 16.7k evasion rating and 10k armour without auras
• 1800 life regen from Agnostic and 2400 mana regen
• 20% less damage with Sigil of Power
• chill/freeze/shock immunity

##Offensive notes and interactions The regeneration and reduced elemental damage taken make it trivial to sustain Righteous Fire for more damage.

Because there's no travel to any convenient lightning damage wheels, the shock effect on its own is mediocre. Anomalous Archmage is an easy choice, then, as it splits the added damage it gives into cold and lightning instead of just lightning. While this is less damage, it's a convenient source of chill and freeze with proliferation for mapping or Sanctum. It also enables Trinity support, a very efficient damage support.

In Ultimatum league, Archmage and Arcane Cloak gave so much added damage that Phantasmal Cremation was required for the corpse explosions to provide reliable Trinity resonance. That doesn't seem to be the case now, as Trinity can still be maintained with Divergent Cremation.

Intensify is a good support that gives massive AoE during mapping and then tighter grouping for more single-target overlap damage. I just didn't like having to worry about monitoring my stacks of Intensify for conditional damage.

The Pure Talent jewel is one of the very few places to get mana regeneration based on a percentage of your mana pool, like Cloak of Defiance. Getting 400 mana regen (among other things) for one jewel socket is quite helpful. Unfortunately, GGG deleted Replica Pure Talent and Clear Mind this league.

##League mechanics

Cremation prefers stationary content. Ritual, Harbingers, and Blight are good. Simulacrum was fine (5-6 rewards) until about wave 24.

Sanctum - While Cremation plays somewhat like a totem build, it has more limited off-screening potential. It's also a two-button build that doesn't really scale with cast speed, so it's going to get hit.

Legion - lol

##Various notes:

• Spell cascade makes Desecrate miserable to play with
• Scion is miserable to level with
• 97% chance to avoid freeze was perfectly fine right up until you click an ailment reflection altar (it's miserable)
• Running the reduced aura effect map mod still makes me chuckle
• Adverse map mods like -x% maximum resistances or reduced life recovery rate are fine by not running RF
• Skip no regen and reduced flask charges gained maps

##Ideas for potential upgrades Archmage builds are particular in that they don't scale very well with gem levels or added damage, which leaves me short on ideas to continue scaling the damage.

1. Invocation of The Agnostic to replace boots with scorched ground and non-damaging ailment effect.
2. Sanctified relic with flask charge generation allows for permanent sustain of Dying Sun which gives +3 projectiles with >50% flask effect. Going from 8 -> 11 projectiles is big damage.
3. Awakened GMP for +1 projectile
4. Atziri's Foible corrupted for +1 curse is ~20-25% more damage

Hopefully there are some ideas out there for more accessible damage upgrades, because Ubers are looking very unlikely.