Ball Lightning Totems Hierophant (Nova+Return Crucible Node)

EDIT: More endgame content here https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/12mgaxc/ball_lightning_nova_totems_feared_50m_dps/?ref=share&ref_source=link . Will upload the rest of the ubers over the weekend probably.

There was some interest in this build so I decided to upload a quick video showcasing it. The Formed invitation was ran a day before the Minotaur map and with much worse gear.

This is my current POB https://pobb.in/Uz7rSwE3cKjn (New POB as of a day later: https://pobb.in/FEd1K_FV78wH) and this is the Poe ninja.

-Mechanics

We're using Soul Mantle for the pseudo-6 link and to inflict curses on ourselves which we turn into 30% increased damage per curse through self-flagellation and a crucible tree shield node for up to 300% increased damage.

We use Viridi's Veil and a magic ring to be hexproof to avoid any downsides of the curses. This also allows us to use Coward's Legacy, avoiding its downside and allowing us to always be considered low-life. This enables us to use Pain Attunement for 30% more spell damage, instant recovery on low life flask (+sorrow of the divine, which applies the recovery to our ES aswell + 60% increased recovery from Ryslatha pantheon).

-Fun in-depth mechanics

I'm using a shaper-influenced ring with 15 life gain on spell hit. Due to totem mechanics we don't get any life gain from the totem hits, but the totems themselves do, which turns them practically invulnerable because of how often they hit (they also have 75% ele res through our cluster and skill tree). We also gain a substantial amount of life recovery with cwdt ball lightning.

Sorrow of the Divine + Instant recovery on low life flask + Coward's Legacy lets us instantly heal for 5k when we press the life flask.

Since we stack a lot of Ele pen but very little elemental resistance reduction, the new "Invert elemental resistance" node is very strong, since it doesn't account for Ele penetration. We also hit often enough to smooth out the damage.

By using Divergent Ball Lightning (10% chance for 50% more damage), 5% chance for double damage on the shield and a high damage range innate to lightning damage we easily reach 50% shock even on guardians despite spamming high frequency damage.

We use the fire mastery despite not dealing fire damage because it gives us 20% increased AoE and 100% increased damage for 4 passive points. We trigger the fire mastery with Flame Wall in our Arcanist Brand.

We convert our life regen to energy shield regen with Zealot's Oath and our energy shield recharge into life recharge with Eternal Youth. This dodges the 50% less life regen rate of Eternal Youth. Having the quickly regenerating energy shield pool protect the recharge-gated health makes more sense mechanically than having the opposite behaviour. It's not really needed but it's a fun interaction.

-Ball Lightning Mechanics

Ball Lightning is a fairly wonky skill mechanically. It's an AoE gem and scales with area of effect, but not with area damage. It deals damage every 150 ms to every enemy in its AoE. This means that we scale the damage by increasing the time the enemy is in its AoE, both with reduced projectile speed and with increased AoE. PoB is pretty good at calculating the damage and I HEAVILY recommend checking your build in PoB whenever any change to your increased AoE occurs to see if you can squeeze out more damage by grabbing one or two inc AoE nodes, or if you can drop AoE nodes without losing damage.

The return from the crucible passive isn't as OP as it sounds. Ball Lightning has a maximum projectile range that you only reach with faster projectiles. In reality the projectile range is limited by Ball Lightning's duration, which you cannot increase. This means that you'll never see projectiles return from reaching their maximum range, only when bouncing against walls. Which is still a nice QoL in close-quarters maps.

I'm using faster projectiles while doing anything that's not a pinnacle boss, because even with faster projectiles the damage is absurd. With slower projectiles we do around 3.5x as much damage though.

-Prices:

The build was generally pretty cheap when I started playing it. None of the rares cost me more than 1.5 div and they're good enough that I don't feel like I need to upgrade them other than rolling a better wand (Crucible skill tree is perfect already). Soul Mantle / Algor Mortis / Viridi's Veil / Sorrow of the Divine / Atziri's Promise are practically free. I paid 5 div for the +4 corruption on my soul mantle, which is a steal.

Prices seem to have shot up a good bit on the other uniques unfortunately. I got my coward's legacy for 2 div, but it seems prices have shot up to 5 div now. Same for Rain of Splinters. You can usually save some money by crafting the Coward's Legacy yourself in the temple.

I paid 50c ish for the 19% self flagellation, 14% lightning pen watcher's eye, Dying Sun and cluster jewels.

I paid 2 div total for the Forbidden Flesh/Flame combo. You can get it for 1.5 right now.

-What I'm still upgrading

On my list of immediate upgrades right now is running lab for an ele penetration boot enchant and getting a ball lightning enchant on my Viridi's.

I also need to get a better wand, but crafting on non-fractured bases is pure torture.

I'll probably drop the Atziri's Promise for a Progenesis. I have the currency for it but it's so expensive that I'm hesitant on pulling the trigger.

Long-term I'd like a sublime vision with "Unaffected by Curses while affected by Zealotry" which would free up the helmet and ring slot, but there's none available on trade right now and I don't think I'll be able to afford one once it pops up anyways.

Edit: Since my awakened lightning pen hit level 5 and now applies exposure I'll probably drop the exposure on the cluster jewel and get Prismatic Heart or something. I've also been contemplating dropping cruelty for awakened controlled destruction, but I'm not sure how good the Elemental Overload uptime would be with 80% less crit chance. As far as I know Ball Lightning rolls the crit for the entire projectile when it's spawned, so the fact each ball lightning hits 10x wouldn't help for uptime.

Edit2: Swapped in awakened controlled destruction, EO uptime seems "good enough" and it's roughly a 30% more damage upgrade over cruelty. Also painfully crafted a weapon, bought a Progenesis and grabbed Storm Drinker on my large cluster. At 50m dps now. https://pobb.in/FEd1K_FV78wH