Written Guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3864539

PoB: https://pobb.in/2Otdd4foFBJE

In 0.2.0 I tried to shoe horn The Dark Defiler into any build I could think of and it fell flat versus traditional damage methods. In 0.3.0, with the change to totems and the addition of Tawhoa's Tending, it became unironically the best way to scale the archetype.

Tawhoa's Vengeance, granted by the support, scales with the life of the totem which means level 40 is the highest base damage you could have... unless you had a way of more than doubling said damage as chaos. Enter the Dark Defiler. With a modest 20 skeletons and a 1c corruption, you are already at 120% damage as extra chaos and we only achieve more with investment. The typical downside of the sceptre: not having a second mace, is mitigated by the addition of Sanctified items in 0.3.0 as now we can achieve level 38 shockwave totems anyway.

I'd love feedback and discussion!