Took inspiration from Ben_'s Caustic Arrow Trickster and drafted a life based Vaal Caustic Arrow Architect of Chaos for the upcoming league.

Here's the PoB: https://pobb.in/azMcQL_2zMGk

Some key interactions and metrics:

• Caustic Arrow is the only attack vaal gem that scales base damage from gem levels: it does not require accuracy to work and can trivially get up to +9 gem levels from a few items and the ascendancy.
• The build uses Vaal Caress as pseudo 6-link gloves, freeing an entire 6-link to use for a manaforge setup.
• The build has up to 85% to max elemental resistances from Everlasting Sacrifice + elemental flasks.
• The build lowers vaal soul cost down to only 2 souls if no vaal skill has been used in the last 8 seconds, making it very easy to use, even on bosses.
• Features zoom zoom gameplay with corpse explosions and over 180% movespeed while mapping with buffs.

Some considerations to keep in mind:

• Leveling a bow templar is rough and will require mulling Caustic Arrow + pierce support from a ranger.
• Templar has very little dexterity near its starting point and will require a jade amulet and/or dexterity rolls on gear as early as level 4.
• There's not that much generic damage near the start of the tree.
• There's very little physical damage reduction outside of Lightning Coil or Cloak of Flame, but it's hard to build around either chestpiece without Grace.
• Vaal Caustic Arrow does not stack damage with itself and should not be spammed, so it ends up playing like the same old TR + Caustic Arrow leaguestart that a lot of people already know.
• May be more clunky than intended with "Skill Effect Duration applies to Vaal Soul Gain Prevention", although the base damage of Caustic Arrow + TR should cover that.
• No news if "Respec with gold" will remain in the game, so the build limits itself to the 20 free respec points from the campaign.

Ascendancy related stuff was placed in the "Configuration -> Custom Modifier" section.