Yes really. Voltaxic Burst. Gem quality buff pushed me over the edge to make this work - about 30% more accounting for removed enchants. League started this from Act 1 and fully suffered until uniques made the build come online.

Build tl;dr

• Voltaxic Burst, Self-Cast, Spell Echo, 4s Duration Delay
• Trickster for Defenses, Uniques for Damage. Power Charge stacking
• 25-50mil Pinnacle DPS – Variance is from 4-10s (35-60 casts in waiting) ramping, Silver Flask, Withers, Sigil of Power, Arcanist Brand. Uptime is extremely variable...
• Gemswap - Increased Area of Effect instead of Intensify while mapping for consistency
• Affliction League - Primalist Charms to cover 30% Spell Suppression and 99% Crit Multi
• Uber Possible...? Not deathless or ignoring mechanics. Very bad vs constant engage/disengage.
• Total Cost – 50div over the first 3 weeks.

PoB: https://pobb.in/l8yyxQSve0-q

Has some tree, gear, and skillgem snapshots of where the build was during each day of progression. Several pivots around and trying new things.

Full Showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYhE7XPlVJQ

From mapping, to bossing, to some ubers showing both the good and the bad across different content.

Defense

• 7K ES, Evasion, Spell Suppression, Grace, 3 Endurance Charges
• Recovery - Trickster Overleech and Instant Leech, Ghost Shrouds, 2% ES regen mastery, ES Recharge, Absorption Charges for occasional elemental damage recoup, 14% ES on kill
• Mitigation - CWDT Immortal Call, Enfeeble (Hextouch), Sigil of Power, Taste of Hate, Elemental Flask for respective pinnacle bosses
• Chaos Inoculation, Chill/Freeze/Shock Immunity, One Step Ahead
• Frostblink of Wintery Blast – no cooldown, some cast speed investment to feel good. 0 Mana cost for emergencies. Cast time can take some getting used to, can sometimes cast twice and jank if not careful

Offense

• 11 Power Charges (Inner Conviction)
• 11 Frenzy Charges
• 14 Masteries for Trickster's Polymath
• Increased damage taken from 65% Shock, 15 Withers from on hit and Withering Step
• Divine Blessing Wrath Aura
• Sigil of Power
• Inverted Elemental Resist Mastery
• Hybrid Lightning/Chaos Damage

Gameplay

Mapping is pre-casting Voltaxic Burst and alternating cast-move stutter-stepping (even stutter-looting) or Frostblink. Withering Step for tougher mobs. M1 Withering Step smooths out mapping with Affliction empowerment and raising the one-shot threshold allowing built-in explosions to better propagate in packs. Stopped using Quicksilver Flask for more consistent movement speed and pacing.

Bossing is stacking casts at a slight distance and picking a moment to blink in and deal damage. Defenses may allow non-physical facetanking. Affliction Empowered map bosses with Map/Altar mods make very scary one-shot slams/melee. Upkeep Divine Blessing Wrath and Arcanist Brand, Fight inside Sigil of Power, Spam Withering Step for withers. Suffer because full ramping is 4-10s with extremely variable uptime. In hindsight, I probably should have used Vaal Discipline to open up a few uptime opportunities.

Uniques Used

Void Battery, Malachai's Loop, Badge of the Brotherhood, Inner Conviction, Ralakesh's Impatience - Obligatory standard Power Charge Stacking. Buffed Ralakesh not only gets rid of most downsides, but also things like not losing all damage while moving since Voltaxic Burst doesn't snapshot damage but does seem to snapshot Intensity AoE, and also free ele res from Endurance Charges makes gearing easier with 3 rare slots. Shimmeron is an option to easily cap crit and not rely on Sigil of Power as much with flat Lightning Damage, but Void Battery offers spell damage and cast speed.

The Vertex - Divine Blessing Wrath. Removed alt support gems means still paying 10% cost, manageable.

Graven's Secret – New addition after Ralakesh buffs. Absorption Charges for Recoup and another max power charge. Nice to have, or use a real ES belt for a higher pool.

Abhorrent Interrogation – Allows for withers to affect both the lightning and chaos portions of the skill while disabling Penetration with Inverted Elemental Resist Mastery being a nice replacement for this. Also some withers on hit in between Withering Steps.

Watcher's Eye – Some mana recovery rate to balance out cast speed/mana, Spell Suppression with Grace

Rational Doctrine – Profane Ground is a nifty -10 all res including chaos and some crit chance. Pretty good value in my opinion.

Misc Stuff

Corrupted Shield – For Grace to free up a gemslot and lower Dex requirements

Affliction League specific – Charms op free stats, spell suppression would have normally come from better body armour roll (21%+), Spellbreaker ascendancy (20%), Watcher's Eye Grace (12-15%), small cluster jewel (12%), or corrupted Ralakesh boots (6-9%). Crit Multi Support instead of Energy Leech Support.

Polymath Masteries – pretty much all of them serve one purpose or another to keep the build taped together with the exception of a few ES mastery duplicates for defense, and Caster mastery for offense.

Escape Artist – The Vertex and Eldritch influenced Body Armor for a sizable amount of Evasion/ES for a larger ES pool.

Spellbreaker vs Soul Drinker – Originally made with Spellbreaker/Wicked Ward in mind, but charms allowed for spell suppression and I liked Overleech more.

Curse – Enfeeble for a little more durability instead of Conductivity/Exposure for more damage. Didn't have any other methods of automation without taking more gemslots. Exposure from Large Cluster was expensive + Ele mastery for more Exposure. Opted to go Inverted Resist on hit proc since it was easiest and more value vs really resistant rare mobs.

Crit Multi also coming from Charms and Forbidden Jewels rather than support gem. Capping Crit Chance with Deadly Infusion rather than getting +1 Power Charges from Unstable Infusion and finding new sources. Spell crit corrupted gloves kinda sparse since no one bothers to vaal it.

Mana investment to use Arcane Surge as a main link, and charge up Sigil of Power during the 4s delay. Lvl21 Sigil stages is slightly longer to cap than 4s in setup, Lvl23 from +2 corrupted boots makes mana cost 600 per stage and takes way too long to cap outside of big prefight setup.

Elemental ailment investment through Crit Mastery, Militant Faith, skill tree so Pinnacles get 65% shock. Damage reduction sources won't give full shock value.

Duration investment for Voltaxic Burst itself, some buff uptime QoL, and also long lasting Withers from Withering Step for 7s duration, 1.5s cd.

Forbidden Jewels - Like Clockwork from Saboteur with Runebinder for even more casts in waiting, but the investment was too far away and took away too much elsewhere. Casting Arcanist Brand already kinda awkward and eventually downsized it to a 3L without faster casting support. Heartstopper was a nice cheap defensive boost early on. Unstable Infusion for +1 Power Charge was a lot more expensive this league and I wanted to cap crit without a diamond flask.

Immutable Force – Solves any stun issues, enables Caster mastery for 25% more if stunned while casting sometimes, ES Mastery so stun scales on base life before CI. Had a short stint with this before just going back to Corundum Flask for mapping as I wasn't sure if it was working.

Originally built using my Lightning Conduit Trickster back in Crucible League, a lot of similarities, but many changes due to skillgem differences – Conduit/Orb of Storms had fast consistent double-hit casts and was good with weaving in and out with minimal setup for bosses. Voltaxic is like constantly turning on a broken lawnmower and playing like a jank Blade Vortex where any casting downtime is a considerable single target dps loss. Ghost Reaver dropped due to even more extreme melee range and inconsistent hit to upkeep leech for pinnacle bosses.

Special Thanks – YPchicken for Trickster inspiration, Mathil's Occultist for some tech and other r/pathofexilebuilds posts discussing this skill during my research.

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