Old School Budget MoM Archmage Hierophant

Old school archmage is back this patch! I haven't played a league since expedition, but decided to come back for the new skill gems and ascendancies.

This build is a budget MoM archmage brand character using the very strong penance brand of dissipation for map clear and bossing. My current character has about 10 div invested in it, but the character starts working with 2-3. It is an all-rounder capable of running medium juiced maps and doing bossing. Since this is an archmage build, pretty much any skill can be substituted - the new storm brand can be used, and you could even play it as classic Pledge of Hands self cast.

Pros:

• Handles wildwood juiced rares well
• Decent single target damage, great with Indigon swap
• 20k max phys taken, 40k max ele/chaos taken vs Pinnacle
• High sustain (4.5k effective regen) not reliant on presence of enemies
• Over 100% reduced ailment effect
• Handles a wide range of map/altar mods

Cons:

• Clear is not the fastest due to small AoE + delay
• You cannot afk in maps for too long or you start degenerating
• Lacks avoidance: can die to barrages of attacks
• Damage does not scale that well with investment - go LL crit at high budget

The addition of charms that provide 5% of mana regenerated over 2 seconds when you've consumed a corpse are the single largest source of mana regeneration (not leech / recovery) in the game at the moment. These charms stack, with each one providing essentially 2.5% base mana regen, which is comparable to the total base mana regen that a character wearing Cloak of Defiance gets. We can get this mod on up to 3 charms plus a That Which was Taken jewel, providing 10% base mana regen total. With proper investment, you can regenerate your entire mana pool in one second if you wanted to. These charms (and the jewel) are currently quite cheap to get in bulk - I got my charms for about 10c and my jewel for 50c.

I use the lowest effort means of sustaining corpse consumption, which is combining Kitava's Teachings with Corpsewalker. As long as we are moving, we trigger the mana regen. During periods where I need to stand still for a while and there are no mobs around (e.g. Wildwood Vendor), I manually cast Desecrate to sustain corpses.

Other than the charms, this build uses fairly a standard Elemental Overload MoM tree and gearing. I'm sure this could be optimized more, but I'm happy with the build where it is. You can sacrifice some defense to run crit instead of EO if you want, but that will raise the cost of your weapons significantly.

For Uber bossing, I swap in Indigon instead of my normal helmet, and use concentrated effect instead of increased AoE in my main link. You will need to buy an Indigon based on your total mana pool - tune the mana cost roll so that you don't overspend. This does change the playstyle to an archmage indigon playstyle (where you cast one brand every 4 seconds), but increases your single target damage by about 4x. I haven't taken the time to learn the uber boss mechanics yet, but was able to kill Uber Eater while not successfully dodging anything (used all the portals though). Normal bosses pose no problem.

At high budget, I suggest you transition to LL ivory tower mana stacker. Those builds are tried and true, and will have much higher damage (though possibly worse recovery). Mana regen isn't typically relied on in those builds, but these charms can be used in non-archmage indigon mana spender builds for a comfortable, reliable source of mana recovery.

PoB (mapping setup, but with conc effect. use inc aoe for clear): https://pobb.in/fPc0Zt5YLPbU