After Nemesis mods kicked my first build around to much I looked into a more defensive type of build.

My idea was to build around the Transcendence keystone and stacking armour.

What catched my eye was the 3.19 newly buffed Lightning Coil (50% phys to lightning). It is a perfect fit for the build since you want to convert 100% physical damage from hits to elemental.

I found a single profile that went with the idea and had some interesting items:

Replica Dreamfather, Formless Inferno and Emperor's Vigilance.

The ascendancy was Pathfinder for permanent flask uptime. We stack armour and fire resist where possible. We want max chaos resistance.

Emperor's Vigilance is used so we can use Divergent Shield Crush with Seething Fury. It works insanely well with the shield.

100% phys to elemental is achieved by: 50 lightning coil, 8% shield corruption, 24% taste of hate with flask effect, 8% formless inferno, 10% watchers eye for purity of fire

My character has around 300k armour and permanent flask uptime. The character is basically immortal against hits.

The Achilles heel of course is damage over time. This is countered by life regen, leech and the Lethe Shade keystone. The build has 100% bleed and poison avoidance. Pantheons are Abberath for burning ground immunity and Arakaali for even more damage over time reduction.

*update* I got told Lethe Shade never worked because I was using Blood Rage. :facepalm I am using Vaal Ancestral Warchief or Vaal Haste now instead for that link since I have no vaal skill yet.

Currently the biggest counter for the build are: Archnemesis Drought Bringer since it will drain the flask leaving you naked if not careful and Nemesis Permafrost. It seems to be one of the most deadly degens. It can drain the build when standing in it for to long.

The build is super niche but I like playing it a lot.

One really interesting concept in the build the small Cluster "The Front Line" and using Molten Shell with increased duration supports. When Molten Shell is up the damage from hits gets so tiny that only a tiny fraction of the 10k buff is eaten over the duration of 7.x seconds. After 2.8 seconds it is on again. The small cluster grants +10 maximum resistances which helps countering the Transcendence malus.

My character has only slightly above 3.3k life right now but thanks to armour stacking and Transcendence that little life converts to over 500k ehp.

https://pobb.in/_4SRccvYRktI

Maybe someone has played with Transcendence armour stacker too and has some ideas he would like to share.

*update* With suggestions I got I changed my build to this now:

https://pobb.in/60v4LW6529bu

My biggest mistake was Lethe Shade and Blood Rage. Those together do not work. Now I have ES too and it is a really good indicator if sth wacky is going on. I specced out of Impale to get points for Testudo. The shield crit mastery, max block and life on block are all super valuable. Additionally I speeced Dire Torment. This may sound wierd at first but the crit chance is actually desired. On top we get access to the mastery which provides 10% less dot damage at all times. That is the biggest weakness of the build atm. On bosses Frenzy charges are still possible thanks to Poachers Mark. I do not need a life flask. I can facetank 5+ heist 83 rare mobs and can do uber lab traps without much hassle. The regen takes care of anything that gets through.