Done with the event and wanted to share what started as a meme build doing its best to mimic a poe 2 Gemling Legionnaire, but turned into something surprisingly good. I wanted to share it because I think it's a pretty interesting character in both offense and defense. Long writeup incoming.

TL;DR - 20 second orb duration, capped lucky block while dual wielding wands, 25 second Enduring Cry buff, 9.5 second Immortal Calls, very good regen and leech, sometimes 13% life recovered on block, baned temp chains + enfeeble at 33.5% increased overall effect, probably around 75m DPS, but lots of buttons to press.

PoB:

https://pobb.in/IOmhTlYN9n4q

Uber Feared rotation + Uber Maven:

https://youtu.be/M0FEQKP3bCo

Storm Burst of Repulsion is pretty interesting since for optimal single target damage, you're expected to constantly channel and release in quick bursts. Like regular Storm Burst, orb explosions deal 75% more damage per 0.4 seconds remaining orb duration, but unlike regular Storm Burst, you can't just hold a bajillion orbs on top of a target because they constantly radiate away from their starting position instead of bouncing around a targeted position. So you want to channel until orbs are about to do their second jump, then release so that all orbs on top of the target + 1 jump away explode, and with enough AoE the orbs one jump away will also hit the main target while only losing a single 75% more damage instance of scaling (which is additive with itself).

Most builds will work in a little bit of quality via Ashes of the Stars, maybe use More Duration Support in the gem links, and then call it a day. I wanted to lean super hard into the duration scaling specifically and see how it could turn out. I chose Bog Shaman because Toad Pact gives both huge 75% AoE for getting the overlaps, and a big 75% increased skill effect duration.

The end result was an orb duration of just over 20 seconds, up from a 0% quality base duration of 0.8 seconds.

Using Dialla's Malefaction corrupted with +1 socketed gem levels, you can do some really stupid things with certain support gems. Gems in green sockets get +30% quality, which is obviously crazy for Storm Burst of Repulsion itself. More Duration Support also scales extremely well with quality - an extra 30% quality results in an extra 15% more duration added onto the support gem. With a 20/23 corrupt in a green socket, I get 66% more skill effect duration. Red sockets grant socketed gems +2 gem level, and with exceptional gems this gets very dumb as well. Level 5 Awakened Enhance grants me 56% quality, and level 4 Empower grants me +6 skill gem levels.

Add in Ashes of the Stars (volatile vaaled to 31% quality, can go up to 37%), and my 21/23 Storm Burst gets boosted up to level 29, and has a stupid 140% quality. This turns the base duration from 0.8 seconds to 3.6 seconds before any other duration scaling is factored in, and 20 seconds with all scaling. Exploding an orb with 1 tick consumed is 3675% MORE damage, which is just a kind of funny number to see as a more damage multiplier. Hitting level 29 also kind of solves my base damage as I'm not really running any other sources of flat added damage. I could potentially get to level 32 Storm Burst with Awakened Empower 5 and a double corrupted Dialla's Malefaction (either adding on +2 AoE or +2 Duration), but it's not realistic at this point of such a short event anymore.

Being a physical conversion skill, Grace of the Goddess is actually pretty sweet. A high rolled one basically reads "gain 150% of physical as elemental damage", and with +3 levels to Invert the Rules, there's no problem with being tri-elemental. Most builds will instead run Hatred/Herald of Ash to get their gained as, but I really wanted to try and make use of this wand instead.

I have a ton of cast speed which gets me to around 26 orbs per second and supposedly 100 million explode dps. Cast speed can go higher by using RF of Arcane Devotion, but regular RF is probably? more damage. I say probably because there is some weirdness to Storm Burst of Repulsion that makes this dps number a little fake. There is a minimum amount of time necessary that orbs need to sit on the field before they're allowed to explode, around .2 seconds. Any less than that, and the orb doesn't explode. In my case, if I channel up to 4 orbs and release, I will get 0 explosions. If I channel 5 orbs, I will get 1 explosion. So however many orbs I channel before I release, 4 of them are fake. If I channel for 0.8 seconds, that's 20 orbs, 4 of which are fake. So I'm really only getting about 80% of that theoretical explode DPS, and then less still because there is a human execution aspect to it. I need to constantly channel to about 20 orbs, release, and then instantly repeat the process for optimal DPS. Deviating from that (gap between channels, not going to correct orb count) lowers the DPS further. The DPS is still very good and easily farming ubers, but it's a solid % less than whatever PoB says. I would guess maybe 75 million, but I don't really know. I also believe this applies to pretty much any Storm Burst of Repulsion PoB calculating its damage for maximum explosion damage. Totem setups that constantly resummon totems probably feel this less since you can just hold down the totem button, but they should still be losing orbs to the void.

The problem with all this, of course, is that I'm wearing a Dialla's Malefaction, and it's basically a body armour that reads "you have no defences" on your body armour. This is especially bad as Bog Shaman, because normally you would take the Apostate node that turns your armour's flat ES into flat life, and Dialla's has a pitiful amount of ES. So the real challenge of the character was to turn this shell into something that could actually not fold to the first thing that touches me.

For the basic stuff, I'm running Flesh and Stone for up to 20% less damage taken, have Malediction for 10% reduced damage deal by enemies. I also have up to 5 endurance charges, 1 of which comes from the big tattoo. Glove implicit gives lightning damage leeched as life, and with a 26/second cast rate skill (that technically hits twice) and instant leech mastery the build easily leeches to full if there is something to leech off of.

I also am block capped while dual wielding wands. I'm a Witch, and among the FF jewel selection I went with Mistress of Sacrifice. Not only does this give 50% skill effect duration, it lets me use offerings on myself at 50% reduced effect. Bone Offering is a funny skill that provides minions with 35% attack/spell block and 4% life regen if they block, and more importantly, it gets increased effect with quality. I bought the only synth wand with +1 level of socketed support gems that I had seen on the market this league, crafted to have another +2 level of socketed support gems. Slapping Bone Offering in there with a level 4 Enhance and More Duration support, I have a 99% quality Bone Offering. Combined with my boot implicits, I can get 39% attack/spell block from Bone Offering and solid % life regen as a bonus, and even at just 1 corpse lasts 26.5 seconds (5 corpses last 47 seconds). Dual wielding (even wands) gives 20% attack block. One foulborn Blue Nightmare gives me 18 spell block (and lucky lightning damage!), one cluster jewel gives another 14% spell block, and one passive cluster gives 14% attack and 8% spell block. Just an extra 2 shieldbearer tattoos gets me capped attack block.

To go with this block cap, I get to use the event gimmick and tattoo on More than Skill. Now I have lucky block if I've blocked recently, getting me to the 93.5% effective block rate. Anyone who has played Gladiator or Svalinn knows how strong this is.

To make the block gimmick even dumber, Loyalty Tattoo of Kiloava summons a minion that gives % life (mana, and ES) recovery on block. It has a base 5% and goes up 1% per Valako tribe tattoo. I have 6 stormriders and 2 shieldbearers, so when the minion is up I have 13% life recovered on a 93.5% effective block chance. It feels pretty absurd when it's up, and has a 40 second duration instead of 12 due to all my duration scaling. Unfortunately it still has a long 80 second cooldown, but it's fun when it's up.

With all this duration scaling, Immortal Call turns from an emergency button to a real, pretty consistent defensive layer. At 5 endurance charges consumed, not only does it give insane less physical damage taken and solid less elemental damage taken, it lasts 9.5 seconds with 1.5 second downtime. Even without any endurance charges, it lasts around 7.5 seconds, but you obviously lose the less physical damage taken scaling. This isn't properly reflected in PoB because it doesn't factor in Runegraft of the Warp, but it does last that long in practice. This actually lets me not only easily tank a lot of slams with only 5.1k life pool, but I can also easily sit in some dangerous phys dot puddles that would normally be pretty dangerous. And with such a long duration, I really don't have to time anything.

23% quality Bane with level 4 Enhance also allows me to have curses with 78% increased effect, though Bane inherently has a 25% less effect modifier. Overall it's 33.5% increased effect, and I link it with Temp Chains and Enfeeble. Vs rares/uniques it should be a 25% less action speed and damage dealt multiplier. Very solid defensive curses and combined with chill, bosses do move very noticeably slower. It's a little hard to tell what my average ailment application is, but on ubers it's usually around 10-20% chill and 20-35% shock, depending on the boss. And of course, with the duration scaling, curses last a very long time, even through multiple phases. I actually stopped cursing Catarina while farming Ziggurats because 1) I didn't need the additional defensive layer and 2) the temp chains was lasting the entire fight and making each of her phase transition animations take even longer, so it made farming her slower.

I also have Enduring Cry + Blessed Call in a Redblade Banner in my weapon swap. Normally weapon swaps for buffing is a meme, but my Enduring Cry lasts 25 seconds. Having the endurance charge generation on demand is very nice, and I jump to 1760 life regen per second while on conc ground, 1311 without conc ground. Unfortunately Blessed Call's conc ground doesn't seem to work with skill effect duration scaling, presumably because Blessed Call isn't a skill. Regardless, it's a very good amount of regen on demand if I am willing to weapon swap, and it's easy to do in between boss phases or at the start of the map. It's worth noting that I already have positive regen through my RF without any additional buffs, and that I have 24% increased life regeneration rate through boots + Runegraft of Resurgence, and 12% increased life recovery rate through Ancestral Tattoo of Bloodlines (2% per tribe, 6 tribes allocated). That makes all life regeneration ~39% stronger, more if I have stopped taking dot damage recently. The baseline values of extra regen I can get are 10% from Enduring Cry, 6.25% from conc ground, and 4% from from Bone Offering.

Also in the weapon swap are Phase Run and Portal. Here I have yet another synth weapon (a sceptre) with +1/+2 socketed support and +8% gem quality. Add in Enhance 4 and my Phase Run gives 93% increased movement speed + phasing with permanent uptime for anytime I just want to run through a mazelike area. I do have a .14/.15 cast time Frostblink of Wintry Blast, but for a lot of areas nothing beats just running fast with phasing. If I ever want to just run, I have +197% movement speed with Phase Run active. It also helps make up for the sin of using a Mageblood with no Quicksilver. Since Portal scales so well with quality, mine has a cast time of .37 seconds as a nice side effect.

There's a very real problem with weapon swapping for Enduring Cry (or Phase Run) that goes just beyond laziness though - my Immortal Call and Bone Offering are in my weapons. While Enduring Cry's buff DOES persist through weapon swap, Immortal Call and Bone Offering DO NOT. This is actually sometimes helpful for Immortal Call, but for Bone Offering it means I need to reapply Bone Offering if I ever swap. In practice Unearth + Bone Offering takes less than a second to reset, but it is something I have to be cognizant of every time I do this. It's also really awkward if I want to refresh Enduring Cry and there's a bunch of stuff going on, because weapon swapping drops half of my block before lucky block is factored.

If it isn't clear, there are a lot of buttons to press and maintain in this build. You can't just hold down Storm Burst of Repulsion, I need to make sure I at least use Bone Offering (and Unearth first if no corpses are nearby), I have curses and guard skills and weapon swap stuff to do. The defenses have very good uptime but are also still conditional. I will definitely get squashed like a bug pretty quickly if I don't at least make sure to have Bone Offering active - I spent a lot of time explaining the defenses, but I'm not going to pretend I'm out here ignoring all damage like a tank. It's definitely not something I would recommend most people try, but I enjoy a lot of jank in my builds.

For a build concept that I went into pretty blindly (this character was originally going to be a Cyclone Harbinger stacking charges) I'm quite pleased with the result.