More fun than ANYTHING I've ever played - Single-Hit Discharge Build Guide [PoE 3.17]

WELCOME TO: THE BOOM! This build is inspired by my old Elementalist Discharge character, which fell off after harvest and ignite nerfs a few leagues ago. However, Discharge has always held a soft spot in my heart, and with the buffs to the flat damage in 3.17, I had to bring it back - albeit in a very different way. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND LEVELLING THIS BUILD Due to there being some very important core aspects of how it works. These notes will tell you all the mandatory parts of the build, where to upgrade, and other niche offensive and defensive layers! PLEASE READ THOROUGHLY. CORE BUILD: Discharge functions by consuming all charges to deal damage on a 2 second cooldown. So, every 2 seconds, we must make sure we have AS MANY CHARGES AS POSSIBLE!! 2 Core Items and 1 core craft (plus some gems) are needed to make discharge function in an automatic, no fuss needed way. 1ST ITEM: Badge of the Brotherhood This item allows us to stack hard into power charges, and get rewarded with an equal amount of frenzy charges, effectively doubling our DPS if we can generate frenzy charges. We do this with the next item: 2ND ITEM: Farrul's Fur Farrul's Fur gives us up to our maximum frenzy and power charges every time we gain Cat's Stealth (given by the Aspect of the Cat ability). However, Cat's Stealth and Cat's Agility both last 6 seconds. This means it would take 12 seconds to wait for our charges! This is not acceptable. In comes the last piece of the puzzle: 3RD ITEM (and gems/passives): Aspect of the Cat Crafted on Helmet or Gloves With aspect of the cat crafted in an item with sockets, we can socket in Swift Affliction and Less duration, as well as taking less duration nodes on the passive tree, giving aspect of the cat a MUCH shorter tick. With everything together, we generate our charges every 2.5 SECONDS! Though its not exactly 2 seconds, its still definitely enough, and then you can feel free to discharge once every 2-ish seconds. WHERE DO THE POWER CHARGES COME FROM?? Power charge stacking is vital to your damage - it is around 20% MORE DAMAGE per power charge you obtain. BASE CHARGES Base charges: 3 Tree Charges: 3 Assassin Ascendancy: 1 TOTAL: 7 MEDIUM-COST CHARGES: Dual Wield Void Batteries: 2 Warlord's Helmet Mod: 1 TOTAL: 10 VERY EXPENSIVE CHARGES: Swift Killer Forbidden Jewels: 1 Power Charge Implicit Rings: 2 TOTAL: 13 OMEGA HARD CHARGE: Corrupted +1 power charge helm: 1 TOTAL: 14 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GEAR: Weapons: Void Battery x2 - These can be corrupted for damage penetrates elemental resistance, but its really only for min-maxing! OPTIONAL: You can switch out a void battery for a +1 power charge implicit shield (not too expensive, and can craft more life etc) Body Armour: Farrul's Fur (Can Corrupt for +2 AOE Gems or +1 Skill Gems for damage) IMPORTANT: You will need lots of off-colours on the chest. Use 3 Blue Bench Craft, then use harvest to non-blue to blue (farm yourself or buy from TFT if in trade) Alternatively, you can buy a 6 white socket chest! Helmet: Early - any helmet with Aspect of the Cat crafted on, spell suppression and life Later - Double influenced with +1 Power charge and Nearby enemies take increased elemental damage (Warlord and Shaper) - Awakener orb together, make sure there is open suffix, and craft Aspect of the Cat on! Gloves: Surgebinders OR Rare gloves with unnerve implicit from Eldrich Currency Can Get +AoE Gems and +Aura Gems for your Aura Setup Boots: High Life, movespeed, and Spell Suppression, and Eldritch crafted Scorched Ground Amulet: Badge of the Brotherhood (can get +1 curse corrupted) Rings: Life and Res, one with Strength on it, and if you need mana, craft -7 to mana cost THEN LATER, open your wallet and BLEED for +1 implicit power charge rings OR precursor's emblem rings. You will have to be careful of resistances when switching these out! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GEM SWAPS: For discharge, there are a couple/few gem swaps you can make if you need to/want to. First off, to make discharge insanely large with its AOE, you can swap: Increased Area of Effect/Awakened Increased Area of Effect > Concentrated Effect This increased your radius about 20-25, which is about whole screen coverage on a 16:9 display. Talk about boom. IF YOU GOT PROBLEMS WITH MANA: Inspiration > Trinity Trinity is a lot of damage, but it only procs on the 2nd hit on bosses, so technically if you stack inspiration up, it will do more damage on the final hit anyway! Plus, your mana cost will be MUCH less -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DEFENSES: This build is a SOFTCORE BUILD. So, be prepared for it to be a bit squishy. HOWEVER, there are some layers of defense that make the build playable, and some ways you can up the tankiness by a LOT. First off, mandatory defenses are: - High Evasion (grace and evasion gear) - Capped Spell Suppression - Purity of Elements for Ailment Immunity - 4.5k MINIMUM Life This is enough to make sure you survive most content in the game, with a few deaths of course, because its kill or be killed on this build. Spell suppression can be found on: - Tree (points and mastery) - Helmet - Boots - Gloves - Watchers Eye (grace mod) IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE MORE: You can switch out Zealotry for Determination, straight up giving you 12k Armour. Not enough for massive phys hits, but enough to stop small hits chunking your life, and will make you feel a lot more survivable! Also, you may notice I have almost no chaos res. This is just a softcore mentality choice, and you can definitely feel free to get some on rings, boots, and gloves (you'll just have to not use surgebinders there) More life on gear is also great, and this couples with switching out surgebinders and getting good vermillion rings. You can easily hit 5.5k plus, which is miles ahead on an evasion build than 4.5k, like my squishy ass has. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MANA ISSUES: No doubtedly you'll come across some mana issues on the build. Honestly, they were solved for me by just using an: Enduring Eternal Mana Flask However, you might not enjoy sacrificing a mana flask for this. There are some ways around it but they can limit the DPS sometimes. First off, as talked about before, Inspiration in the main links will very much help your discharge. Secondly, you can use -7 mana cost ring crafts, and replica conquerors efficiency. Due to only using discharge once every 2 seconds, this can be the make or break, meaning you regen your mana easily in the downtime. Lastly, you can get some mana regen and flat mana on gear - you'll be surprised how efficient it is. SIDE NOTE: If you have more than 200 ES, you can opt to take eldritch battery - its only an extra 2 points on the tree and this will alleviate all mana problems. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BANDITS AND PANTHEONS: Honestly, I took alira on this build, but its really not needed, unless you starve yourself of res like me! The mana regen and crit multi is pretty nice, but you can do more with the extra points. So either: Alira, or Kill All Pantheons: MANDATORY - Brine King Soul OPTIONAL - honestly, any small god is fine! I like the unnafected burning ground from the upgraded abberath soul! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LEVELLING: Please don't level this build. Switch into it at a minimum of level 70 - with at least 7 power charges! You can use any generic caster levelling setup (think along the lines of armageddon brand/cremation, or storm brand, etc). I will link levelling stuff in the video of other creators, but this is not intended AT ALL as a league starter. You have my warning, stop commenting on how the build isnt working at level 40 while youre trying to ascend. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PoB CONFIG: The config in the PoB is close to optimal situations, such as big shock, trinity etc. Trinity: This will only be applying to your 2nd or 3rd hit, so its a bit of a DPS warrior ability. Still, because of its power i think its the BiS gem link to use. It is set at 50 resonance, as our cold and lightning damage is well balanced. Shock: I shock bosses for 50% all the time. Like every hit. So 45% shock in the config is a little less than what it would be in game - however, it only applies to the second hit again! To emulate your first hit on any boss, take off shock and trinity - its a lot less damage, but it still chunks. ENJOY THE BUILD! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------